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and woke to find myself chin-
deep in the tepid water, with Gertie banging as loud as deference would allow
on the bathroom door. I
assured her I was awake again, rinsed and dried and then made my way to my
bedroom. It was the finest room in the house and it possessed a large
Victorian four-poster bed which I remembered from my visit here three years
earlier. This was ideal for my purposes as it meant I was able to sling my
hammock between two of the sturdy posts, and even orient my hammock in a
direction that ensured my head would be pointing towards the Community. I
slept soundly, and dreamed of nothing I could recall.
*
It was while I was sorting out my kit-bag the following morning that I found,
right at the bottom of it, something extra and very special; something I did
not know I had. It came in the shape of a tiny vial wrapped in a scrap of
paper and secured by a rubber band. '
In case. S.
,' said the words printed on the note. I opened the tiny glass jar with some
difficulty and sniffed the dark, almost black ointment inside.
It was zhlonjiz
; the priceless, irreplaceable unguent that is more precious and significant
to us than gold, frankincense and myrrh to Christians& no; more precious yet;
it is as though we possess our Grail, but it is still magically powerful, and
consumable. I had heard of zhlonjiz since toddlerhood but only ever seen or
smelled it once before, at my coming-of-age ceremony three years earlier. I
knew that my Grandfather had only the tiniest amount of the treasured,
mystical salve left after all these years. That he should honour me so by
entrusting this substantial fragment of our holy of holies to my keeping was
both a humbling tribute to the love he had for me and the faith he had in me,
and a sobering reminder - had I
needed one - of the importance of my mission.
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I felt tears prick behind my eyes. I carefully resealed the vial, pressed its
little bakelite cap to my forehead and whispered a blessing, then kissed the
tiny glass jar and stowed it carefully, wrapped in my extra clothes, back in
the bottom of my kit-bag.
*
Edinburgh has the merit as a city - by our beliefs - that it is at its centre
erratic, convoluted and full of different levels and strange steep passageways
(though by all accounts the old cities of the Holy Lands surpass it in this
regard, and Tokyo, in Japan, is apparently quite creditably difficult to find
one's way around). Edinburgh is still a city of course, and therefore to be
avoided unless one has some pressing need to stay there - in Gertie Fossil's
case a nostalgic weakness for the marital memories associated with the house
was what had persuaded her to remain - but as cities go it is neither overly
regular in pattern
(save in the New Town) nor too large to see out of, two criteria which have
always seemed to me important. We have always held it to be a bad sign when
navigating one's way round a city becomes a matter simply of knowing one's
x-axis from one's y-axis, and we are I think rightly horrified at the prospect
of discovering that the only direction to look in the hope of finding
something natural to look at is up at the clouds (like as not polluted by the
sight of aircraft and their vapour trails or, at night, by the reflected
lights of the city itself).
I had still to decide how I was to make my journey to London with sanctity,
but the relative speed of my progress the previous day - I had envisaged
taking two days and having to find shelter somewhere ashore -
together with the comparatively benign atmosphere of Edinburgh left me in no
hurry to start travelling immediately when I woke up the next morning at a
shamefully late hour; I decided I could take up to a day to rest and think.
F�ted at breakfast as much as at supper - there were rose-petals in my tea and
I had to let Gertie Fossil wash my feet - I told her and her son that I needed
to reconnoitre various aspects of the city, and would return once I had
completed my scouting expedition. I declined Gertie's offer of a guide in the
shape of
Lucius - he looked relieved too, behind an anxious smile - and assured her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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