Page 46 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
Or as Auden translated it—it revives. It reawakens. As if from sleep, as if from death. I fall asleep thinking of that one word.
Convivificat.
Chapter 14
The nights go like this: I fall asleep in a fit of keening loneliness and tumble straight into the same vivid, grasping dreams of the thorn chapel. I wake up, ready to scream or ready to come or both, never able to remember much about why the dream made me that way. Only that there were thorns and hands on my body and Auden silhouetted in shadow in front of a door I’ve only ever seen in my mind.
The days go like this: I catalog, I scan, I scan some more, and then I find Saint or Becket to help me pass the time. When they’re in from London, Auden and Rebecca are busy with the ongoing construction and destruction of the house and grounds, and I use my lunch hour to take restless, dream-filled naps in my room, so aside from the occasional glimpse of Auden’s shoulders bent over his office desk when I walk past, we don’t see each other until the evening hours.
On Sunday mornings, we go to Mass at Becket’s church—all of us except for Rebecca, who stays at the house and works instead. Once, we saw St. Sebastian scowling and pouting in the very back pew, but only once. Becket tells me Saint usually only comes to the church at night, alone, to continue his ongoing argument with God, and hardly ever comes to Mass. I save a spot next to me in our pew anyway.
Just in case.
While I catalog, Delphine wanders into the library at intervals to chatter or just to sit on one of the tables while she works on her phone, and gradually I begin to see the amount of time it takes for her to keep up her job as an influencer. There’s not only her content to produce and plan out, but emails and phone calls and an unceasing rain of comments and DMs that she answers to boost engagement.
When we do talk, it’s usually more questions about kink or speculating about Thornchapel’s old rituals.
Becket joins us often. Saint stays away when the others are in.
None of us talk about the kissing, there’s no more chosen bride talk from St. Sebastian, and if Auden and I have trouble making eye contact or being alone together in the same room, no one seems to notice, which is for the best. No more kisses for me, unless they come from Rebecca, but she seems preoccupied after the game, working at every spare moment, even when we’re all curled up with drinks by the fire, so I don’t ask her for a repeat session.
“Auden’s asked her to build a new maze,” Becket explains to me one day after they’ve gone back to London. “And I think it’s not coming easily.”
“I wish they’d leave it alone,” I sigh, looking out the large windows at the south end of the hall. I can only just make out the leading edge of the maze before it recedes into the mist.
Becket makes a noise of agreement. “Me too.”
But we both know that Auden’s drive to reshape Thornchapel is driven by forces deeper than our shared nostalgia, and he’s determined beyond measure to carve it up beyond recognition, as if by carving it up, he can excise his childhood from the landscape. The very fact that we all have memories of the maze would be more proof to him that it needs to be peeled off the face of the earth.
“I don’t know what it would take to convince him to keep it,” I say. “You’d think he’d direct more of this animosity toward the house itself, because surely that’s where he remembers his father the most?”
Becket follows my stare to the mist-veiled maze, and we just stare at it for a few minutes. “He just has to see how it matters,” Becket says finally. “He has to understand it. Thornchapel, I mean.”
I look at Becket now, questioning. “You think he doesn’t understand his own house?”
“No,” the priest says, returning my look with a sad smile. “I don’t think he does.”
“You have to stop doing that,” I scold St. Sebastian as he sets another armload of books down on the long table. “You need to relax.”
Saint gives me a very small, very reluctant tip of his lips—which I’ve learned is the closest thing to a real smile I can coax out of him. “I actually like doing this,” he says, sitting down and opening up the first book. With a piece of paper and a pencil, he starts scratching down some of the easy-to-find information I’ll need to build the title’s metadata entry. “There’s something satisfying about it. Also it feels weird to sit here and watch you work.”
“Sorry,” I say, my attention back on the computer I use as a cataloging workstation. ?
?I’m trying to do at least a shelf a day. There are so many books.”
The sheer number never ceases to astound me—in fact, I think I’m even more in awe than when I first arrived, because now I fully appreciate just how many there are and how long it will take to put this place in order. No wonder poor Estamond Guest gave up on her ledgers.
Saint makes a soft noise that could almost be a laugh, and I jerk my head up, hoping to catch a smile. No such luck, but I am treated to the vague tilt of amusement to his eyes as his long fingers flip through the pages of the book he’s making notes on. It’s a younger book—at least, compared with most of the books in here—with a tattered paper jacket showing a clumsy illustration of a clapper bridge and a river.
“What’s so funny?” I can’t help but ask. I want to know everything he’s thinking all the time; it’s like some weird supply-and-demand thing where he keeps himself locked so tight that anything from him feels like a gift of gold. And even though these last two weeks between us have been strained and chaste, we can’t seem to stop seeking each other out. I can’t seem to stop wanting to kiss him. Or right now, wanting to straddle him and lick his neck.
“Our friend Estamond,” Saint says, his eyes sparkling as he pushes the book toward me. “She was quite the scandal back in the day.”
I reach for the book and tug it toward me. It’s a motorist’s guide to Dartmoor, published sometime in the fifties, and there’s an entire chapter about Thornchapel, which back then was open to visitors one day a week. I start reading at the top of the page.
Visitors will find the grounds enchanting, especially the maze to the south of the house. Originally constructed in Tudor times, it’s said that it was built atop the ruins of a medieval labyrinth, but this seems mostly to be local legend, as the housekeeper said there’s no family record of that being true. In any case, the maze was given new life under the dashing and vivacious Estamond Guest. Born Estamond Kernstow to an ancient and worthy family here in the moors, she was only nineteen when she caught the eye of the much older Randolph Guest. By all accounts, however, it was a happy marriage, and Randolph indulged his young wife by letting her host extravagant house parties with some of the best and brightest of the day. Poets, painters, thinkers, and novelists all came to spend quiet days and cheerful nights on Thornchapel’s inspiring grounds.
Estamond’s bohemian taste in company, however, led to unpleasant rumors about her character. These rumors only grew after she commissioned a full repair of the overgrown Tudor maze—and commissioned new statuary for the middle. The centerpiece in question was a depiction of Adonis and Aphrodite in an unmistakably amorous embrace, leading to speculation about Estamond’s personal morals.
