The Tom Version...

Bishop Tom did duly pop over for Vespers on Sunday evening, bless him and his silken official socks. Ordinarily such a visitation would have been an occasion for considerable soul searching - are the numbers [see very early on this] up to the mark and on target, is there anything in one's recent behaviour that might have caused remarks to have been passed over Episcopal sherry, does the petty cash square, etc., etc?

A good Bishop - as a literal 'overseer' - is supposed to be like a good manager: one is never quite sure that they are watching, but by golly one soon finds out that nothing has passed them by without due notice. If fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then trepidation as to what precisely one's Bish has on one is certainly within the coaching manual for phase two of the play.

This time around, though, one's own thoughts were too much pre-occupied with matters concerning the upcoming Ceremony of the Blood Letting to be overly-concerned about what Tom had to report or say.

Vespers it must be said passed largely without incident, though I would comment in passing that I have my doubts as to whether the appointed thurifer was not in panic mode when he laid the incense upon the charcoal, there never having been before such a billowing cloud of dense, aromatic material filling the entire Church. Eyes were watering not so much from the emotion of the thing ('Pange lingua glorioisi', et cetera) as from the stinging assault to one's visual organs.

"Never known such tear gas since my army days in Aden," was all that Tom said afterwards, which was generous. He even condescended to bless the genuflecting thurifer when all was done - as is customary - though in truth the manual touch on the head was more a swipe than a paternal patting.

Anyways, safely back in the rectory - with H at the sharp end of six hours of food preparation in next door's borrowed kitchen [see earlier for reasons for re-location] - Ol' Tom and I sat down in my den for a glass of malt and a conflab on why he had come over to see me now. (Not that I am suggesting that a Bish is not welcome at any moment he should just so ever decide to drop in on one of the front-line troops, but he and I both know that there is little he does by accident [unlike his peer over in Southwark!] and that his arrival in the middle of a frantic Advent season had a proper and a particular purpose.)

"This matter of the blood letting," he began. "What's your take on this whole peculiar business?"

Well that threw me for a start as I had no idea he was aware of, let alone up to speed, on the matter. I'd dared not mention it to him once it hove into my view and I had simply assumed it to be beneath the dignity of his notice. So to find Ol' Tom asking me what I thought without any preparatory insight into his own views was entirely disconcerting!

"I um, I ah," was, therefore, about as far as I managed before, mercifully, I was interrupted with a regal raising of the Episcopal hand and an interjection from on high.

"Been giving it a lot of thought these past few weeks - knowing it was coming up fast upon you for the first time - not wanting to interfere in local matters of course [perish the frigging thought, thought I!] but there is some background and some personal [a not so humble cough] interest I felt it useful to share with you at this juncture."

"Share away," I offered in my best 'unconditional positive regard' counselling voice!

Well, the upshot of all of this was that it transpired Ol' Tom not only was fully in the know about feuds in general and the letting of local blood in particular, but also he himself - Ol' Tom in person no less - is actually a family member of one of the warring parties! (This of course, it goes without saying, must go no further - though I season my own qui vive with the remembrance of the late-medieval saying "He who would keep a secret must keep it secret that he has a secret to keep.")

Further, Bish Tom - this cannot in any circumstances be repeated even to the most pressing of enquiries from the Spanish Inquisition or their descendents - has been in the past an actual combatant, a chosen champion of the cause and a shedder of blood!

[A due pause in recounting whilst one downs an appropriately large malt!]

Suitably refreshed and recovered to continue: Mildred and he are, it seems, cousins of a removed variety Ol' Tom the elder by some spare decade. When the time came for blood to be let in the late 1970s, Tom was deep in his intellectual and spiritual studies at one of our more significant Universities. Though not entirely unaware of the whole history of the thing, he had not for a moment imagined he might one day be caught up in the actual doing of the thing until, that is, he had received a telephone call from Uncle Charles - a pretty over-bearing and oppressive fellow by all accounts - to tell him that he must abandon all consideration of the relevance of Early Fathers to the modern social milieu for a weekend and come home to do battle on behalf of the family!

Poor Tom was not so much - as his Shakespearean namesake - a-cold as a-flummoxed. He had always assumed that a far more suitable champion would be found on any single occasion for him never to be called into the lists. His own elder brother for one was not known to be shy with the wooden sword from his days in the nursery and, surely, would be the man to step into this particular bellicose breach? Sadly, though, as oft the case despite the willing spirit the same elder brother's flesh proved the weaker, he having fallen from a horse that very week before quite busting his wrist and his head.

In such a crisis Uncle Charles - in his aforementioned over-bearing and oppressive manner - had decided that push had come to shove and Student Tom must be summonsed as a late substitute [that being clearly within the Rules it seems]. Tom had, naturally sought to decline the honour in part from principle though also - he owned to me - rank fear of being pierced with a sword. (And on that, if little else, I am entirely in agreement with Bish Tom on the matter of the fear as much as the principle!)

Uncle Charles did not, it seems, intend to take any no for any answer, re-affirming that as it was he who paid all Tom's college bills - both regular and irregular - either Tom did what 'Nuncle C deemed 'the right thing' and fought or he [Tom] would be cut adrift without a penny more to his purse.

We must not - howsoever tempted - judge Tom harshly if his decision to abandon principle and overcome all fear for the sake of a student pension would not have been ours. Leaving, as essentially not pertinent, any such consideration of scruple the fact of the matter is - or rather was - that one moment Bish [to be] Tom was basking in the sunny uplands of collegiate studies, the next in the dark vista of a duelling ring! (For any pedantic historians - and there are some left -who wish to know the outcome of this particular encounter I merely say 'pish' and 'hard cheese' and 'that's for me to know and you not to be informed.' Safe and necessary only to say - obviously - that Bish Tom survived the day.)

[More pause for more malt.]

Having therefore - as we have established - fought and lived to fight another day, Tom had returned to his studies a wiser (as in more enlightened into all that might befall a man on the rocky path of life) fellow than the weekend preceding. From, however, that moment forth until our encounter in my den over a more than decent malt he had not whispered a word to man nor wife. You can, of course, imagine that a bloody conflict is not something one would ordinarily wish to see appear on one's CV when seeking - as dear Tom was always bound to do - ecclesiastical advancement. (In the days of the Crusades perhaps skill with a sword would be considered an essential attribute for a coming cleric, but less so nowadays by a long, long chalk!)

Conscience though is a funny, nagging cove. An in-built - hard wired as it were by the Almighty Himself - device to point us to heaven, howsoever we misdirect or ignore its still, small voice until we are so inured in sin as to be deaf to all its remonstrances, it will still keep harping to our heart or chipping away at our stony spirit. Thus it has been with Bish Tom. Safe now in his Episcopal Palace uneasy rested the head that wore the Mitre, until the day came - as surely it must - when he would recount his tale of involvement in the mortal matter in the hope of ending, for all time, the feud. [Let though one be clear here - I am not Tom confessor nor would wish to be. There are no 'sacred seals' being broken. I have been a sounding board and that is all.]

The totality of the revelation having exceeded the time for supper - not to mention the near exhaustion of my better malt - the moot and significant point is whether Bish Tom, having cleansed his breast of the festering sore within, was able to offer some insight into how our hero - for such is I - should approach the present champions - Mildred and Maurice as aforementioned - with a view to calling a halt 'ere proceeding have begun this time around.

For that though one [i.e. you] must wait for further news. There are deep discussions to be had and diplomatic lines to be opened and explored. Sufficient for the day are the tales thereof!