Nor Will He Sleep by David Ashton Read Free Book Online

sister, pretend to be wild at heart but underneath you are nothing more than a . . . conformist!’
    Jessica was stung.
    Nothing stings like family.
    ‘Am I really?’
    ‘Yes, you are!’
    A somewhat childish exchange, but it produced a frozen silence, which was broken by a loud authoritative call from the next room.
    ‘That is our mother’s voice,’ said Jessica, throwing the half-chewed apple at her brother, who caught it neatly. ‘In case you do not recognise the timbre.’
    She swept out through a side door, while Daniel flipped the apple, which landed tidily on a small salver.
    ‘Mater will give it me in the neck,’ he grinned, but Alan had other matters on his mind.
    ‘Daniel? Why did you not mention our wrangle with the old woman?’
    ‘More trouble than it’s worth.’
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘Use your noddle, my dear chap,’ drawled Daniel, in the affected tones he and Alan were wont to employ while in heroic mode. ‘Once they knew that, never get them out the
door.’
    Grant was not quite at ease.
    ‘Last night – we were separated quite a time. After the chase.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Daniel, sighting down his stick like a rifle. ‘Press of the crowd, old chap.’
    ‘I wondered – where you had gone?’
    ‘A duel to the death,’ replied Daniel carelessly. ‘With one of the Scarlets. He had a wheelbarrow and I my cane.’
    Alan nodded acceptance as the door opened and Jessica emerged with a malicious smile.
    ‘Our mother would like to know,’ she murmured, ‘the whereabouts of a certain set of corsets?’
    ‘They were decrepit,’ protested Daniel.
    ‘And fitted all the better. She is waiting.’
    Daniel took a deep breath, limped towards the door, and slid it shut behind himself.
    Appraisal from a woman can contain many elements. Jessica looked at Alan’s solid frame, decent demeanour, then had certain thoughts she kept to herself.
    ‘You are a good friend, Alan.’
    ‘I hope so.’
    ‘Because of his . . . infirmity, Daniel feels he has to prove himself. Twice over.’
    ‘I realise that.’
    ‘You must watch over him.’
    ‘A difficult task – at the moment,’ Alan replied wryly.
    Jessica’s eyes widened innocently and she moved a little closer so that he could inhale, however faintly, the odour of sweet apple.
    ‘Perhaps,’ she breathed, a glint of mischief in her eyes, ‘I may provide assistance.’

Chapter 7
    For commonly, wheresoever God buildeth a church,
    The devil will build a chapel just by.
    Thomas Becon, chaplain to Thomas Cranmer
    John Gibbons heaved at the heavy pew, trying to wedge it back into the straight. It was a mystery how some mornings these solid receptacles for the nether regions of the
worshipful congregation were skewed out of true.
    Older members of St Stephen’s Church muttered darkly it was the devil dancing in the dark of night that moved the benches, his cloven hooves beating a rhythm that resonated then translated
into sinful shifting; John, though he nodded politely, kept his own counsel.
    As he did in most things. A quiet watchful young man bound to follow his father Jonas into the ordained ministry of the Church of Scotland, he was of average height, a stocky build, sandy-haired
with a calm disposition.
    A certain quiet humour occasionally informed his words but in contrast to his father’s more public persona, he was a private soul.
    He looked across to where the wiry figure of Jonas Gibbons stood talking with the two policemen, one indeed rising like a steeple above the minister, and then John knelt down not in prayer but
to run his eye along the line of the next pew.
    It was also out of true.
    Satan’s slant in the House of God.
    On the outside St Stephen’s Church faced the elements with the usual equanimity of Craigleith stone, hewed sharp to cut through inclement weather.
    A broad flight of steep forbidding steps provided occasion to contemplate myriad sins as the faithful laboured upwards to the main door, above which, rising a good