200. Sanctuary

200. Sanctuary 

“No way!” shouted Uncle Wildgale. “Nobody is going to throw a basin  of water at me and call me a demon and shoo me away from a place I don’t even want to be at! I don’t want to go in there. And there is no way I will be persuaded to.”

We were standing before the front  gate of the Monastery where I had heard a familiar, beautiful male voice sing matins.

“Nobody is going to throw water at you,” Don Alonso said, trying to reason with my uncle. “That was in the Middle Ages. Things have changed since then. It is true that we have bumped into the Church, but these monks here are ghosts and should be easier to deal with. Souls they like to call themselves. Among mortals, people with different beliefs fight  each other and vie for power. They are always doing that. Here,  we respect difference. Every one of us  has his or her own space.”

“All the more reason for me not to invade theirs!” argued Uncle Wildgale.

 “You are not  going to invade anything. You are going to call politely  on these people to ask if they have seen your younger brother,”  said Mum.

“You call on them. You’re a queen. That ought to impress them.”

“I’m a woman, Wild. They might not even want to speak to me.”

“Send an ambassador. Send Darcy. No one can say no to him.”

“No, no! We´re not making this public, Wild. Why, I have to get home before Oberon wants to know where I´ve been. I’m going to tell him I was at Papa’s chef’s bethrothal luncheon, as if it were something planned. He must not suspect anything. Nothing would make him happier than to be the one to tell Papa Richie is on the lam.”

“What would happen if he did? Will the old man have a heart attack? No! He’s immortal! He’s AEternus Virbonus. He can fake a heart attack, but he can’t have one! Let him go in there and claim Richie himself. How long can that take him? He won’t be able to play golf for half an hour. So what? That will be it. Or chess, that’s what he plays in the evenings.”

When I told Uncle Wildgale I had a hunch Uncle Rich was hiding in the last place we would look for him, which was a monastery, I thought I would probably be wrong. But Uncle Wild began to shout “Yes! Yeeeeeeees! Yes, yes, YEEEEEEEEEES!”

It turned out Richie was a member of a society of friends of monasteries. He contributed generously to the maintenance and upkeep of several of these places. And every Christmas he would send the monks who  haunted them cases of his own brand of champagne. Richie makes better champagne than Dom Pérignon. In exchange for his generosity, the monks would humor him and allow him to sing once in a while in their chapels. On their way to the Death Coast, Wild and Rich  stopped to spend the night at the same place we did. But we were at  the inn open to the public, Rich was in the monks’ private area and Uncle Wild slept out in the wild sooner than enter a place where he felt he wouldn’t be welcome. There he absurdly allowed the rain and the dew to wet him, so he could avoid being possibly hit by holy water. Because of all this we didn’t run into each other. And now it was possible that Rich was hiding among the monks.

“Michael and I will do it, we´ll go for him,” said Don Alonso. They stepped up to the door and knocked and it sprung open immediately and two men came out before anyone could say anything. One was the doorkeeper, Don Casiano. The other was…you guessed it, Don Caralampio.

 “Yes,” said Don Caralampio. “Your brother is in here, Madam. As I am the person responsible for dealing with beings of other notions, that is, other faiths and creeds and ideologies, I have come here to try to reason with this lad.”

“You are the Inquisitor-General?” I couldn’t help crying out in surprise.

“Shhhh!” said Don Caralampio, taking me by the shoulder and looking over his. “Draw a thick veil over the past! Don’t even mention it  here. We do things differently now. Well, I, for one, always have. When you need to speak to one of us, try to find someone very, very ancient, from the beginning of our time, like me, or someone very, very modern. The case is I have been trying to reason with your brother, Madam, good evening to you, I haven’t even greeted you all  properly. Good evening to everyone, Michael, Alonso!  Would you please come in?”

“We’re fine out here!” said Uncle Wild.

“As you wish. Your brother is under the impression nobody loves him and he wants to retire from the world and become a monk. I have told him that the monks here were monks in life, but now they are only souls who would rather enjoy the afterlife living as they always did than in any other way. Conservatives who love routine, you know. Your brother thought that since monks work in orchards, we would be impressed at how well he can do that. But it is the hard labour we value, not the resulting fruits. He also said he could invent new wines and liquers for us, and that our fellows in the mortal world would certainly appreciate, but ghosts are of set habits and not too keen on anything too new.  All the monks here were once mortals. There is no such thing as a spirit that becomes a monk. When a spirit converts, he becomes an angel. And he is immediately sent to Heaven, where he serves the Lord. Now, I told your brother he could convert and he could go sing in the celestial choir. There is a lot of competition there, but his voice is so good I think he could handle that. However, I don’t think he would last very long up there.”

“We know he is no angel,” said Mum. “You are absolutely right about that.”

“You see how I told you they would eventually kick him out of here and all we had to do was wait?” said Wildgale. “When he sees nobody wants him but us, he’ll hav to return home with his tail between his legs.”

“I, too,  think it would be best for him to return to his fold,” said Don Caralampio, “but we are not going to kick him out of here.”

“Ha!” said Wildgale. “That’s what you think! If he goes up there they will cast him down into a blackberry bush even before November. They won’t be able to wait. ”

“No, no!” said Don Caralampio. “We´re not sending him up above. But he can haunt this place until he gets bored of doing this.”

“What surprises me is that he isn’t already bored,” said Mum.  “He is always bored.”

“Except when he is belabouring others. He is giving us a hard time and enjoying that,” Uncle Wild said to Mum. “That’s why he is not bored. The more we fret about him, the less of a chance there will be of his coming home with us. ”

 “No,” said Don Caralampio. “I can’t believe that of him. He is such a sweet spirit.”

“It’s incredible how he cons all the old foggies,” Wild muttered to Mum.

“Tell him we will name the Auditorium at Apple Island after him,” said Mum to Don Caralampio. “And we´ll make his birthday a bank holiday. He is a little vain, he might like that.”

“Why don’t you let us speak to him?” said the Bluebell twins. “We’ll tell him we´ll find him the best wife ever.”

“He doesn’t want to speak to anybody, Madam and little girls,” said Don Caralampio. “He knows you are out here but won’t come out himself.”

“Ha!” laughed Uncle Wild. “He must be cracking up inside!”

Michael O’Toora and I exchanged a look and I suddenly had an idea I thought might entice my uncle. The sort of idea my sister Heather would have in a situation like this.

“Michael, would you mind giving your Halloween party in Uncle Rich’s place this year? He is always giving parties. Heather and Thistle could help you both organize the best bash ever.”

“I would be delighted,” said Michael.

“No,” said Mum. “That won’t be possible.”

“We might as well them,” said Uncle Wild to Mum. “They are all over seven. I’m sorry to rain on your bright idea, Arley, but  Rich gives all kinds of parties except Halloween parties. He has never given one nor will he. Daddy warned him never to. He told Rich some psycopath might have a bad day and cut the king of the party’s head off  with a sickle. Although he is Lord of the Harvest, Uncle Rich always tries to keep out of public view in the autumn.”    

“Oh, good heavens!” said Don Casiano, crossing himself.

“Coming, coming. Any minute now, here comes the basin of water,” muttered Uncle Wild.

“As in the case of your people,” said Mum to Don Caralampio, “some of our kind still have to give up unfortunate old habits.”

“You’re frightening my friends!” Uncle Richearth shouted at us, suddenly appearing at the doorway like a fiend. “You want to leave me friendless, isolated, so you can manipulate me, any way you please!” He turned to Don Caralampio and Don Casiano and said very softly,  so gently that it seemed a different person was speaking, one we had never seen before, “I´m leaving so my family won’t importune you more than it has. I thank you for your hospitality, from the heart. I hope you won’t hold this disturbance out here against me, and you will allow me to visit again.”

“You know you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” said Don Caralampio. “You can claim sanctuary and we will grant it to you. We certainly will.”

“I know I have to go,” said Uncle Richearth. “It’s best for everyone.”

“That easy? No!” Uncle Wild whispered to me. “He has to have something up his sleeve.”

“How can he be killed?” asked the twins, horrified themselves. “Isn’t he immortal, like Grandpapa? Like everybody?”

“I can’t be killed but I can have my head cut off,” said Uncle Richearth.  “I would be like Alpin’s father. Why was he in such a hurry to leave? He’s so nosey I thought he would wait to see how all this turmoil ended.”

“Alpin’s dad?” I said, surprised.

“No. Your odious friend.”

I looked about me. And now it was Alpin who had disappeared.