Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 07:09:09 +0100 (BST)
From: Mike Arram <mikearram@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Henry in Finkle Road - 21

  All the Michael Arram stories are gathered together now on
www.iomfats.org, if you would like to investigate further the characters
featured here.
  The story contains graphic depictions of sex between young males.  If the
reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your place of
residence, please leave this site immediately and do not proceed further.
If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.

XXI

Henry and Gavin had a great day.  They played tennis doubles that afternoon
with Harriet and Eddie, and were wiped off the face of the court without
minding it at all.  Gavin was entranced to be in an environment where
servants laid out lunch in the beautiful gardens, and chilled drinks were
available at the ring of a bell.
  `Henry!  I like this being rich!  Can you make our fortune, quickly?'
  Henry laughed.  `Baby, you're the one who's good with figures.  Just
enjoy an away-day in paradise.  It'll be back to work on Monday.'
  They watched as Oskar and Peter mopped the floor with the twins in their
turn.  Eddie was a surprisingly bad loser where Peter was concerned.  It
was the legacy, Matt said, of a bitter childhood rivalry between the two
brothers.  `Peter was an obnoxious little sod until he was fourteen and
finally gave in to the fact that he was gay.  It was only then he stopped
resenting Andy.  It's quite a story.  Terry tells it best, as it was he who
was Pete's salvation.  Pete is one of Terry's boys.  They actually had a
fling in the past.'
  `Does David know?'
  `I doubt it.  But he's not the jealous type, is he?'
  `I guess not.  Even though he was desperate to get into bed with me, he
never resented Ed Cornish.  Any news of Ed, Matt?'
  `I think he and Guy are having their farewell holiday in the Caribbean.'
  Henry's heart gave a leap.  `Farewell!  What's happened?'
  Matt smiled at Henry.  `Nothing.  Just life.  Guy has finished his first
degree at Cambridge, and though they've had fun, the two of them have
decided that theirs is not a life partnership.  They're going to stay
friends but split up as lovers.  Henry ... what's that I see in your eyes?
You have your cute little Gavin, and he should be enough for you.  I quite
fancy him myself at times.'
  Henry was flustered.  `Yes... of course I do.  But Ed and I were lovers.
You don't lose interest in a bloke overnight.  I'll always be his friend,
which is why I'm concerned for him.'
   Fritz arrived as the tennis was winding up, and had a very emotional
reunion with Oskar and Helge, his brother and sister.  He cast an eye over
at Harriet and went straight to her, offering his hand but seeking a kiss.
He was delighted when he got it.  He received a hug from Eddie, but Henry
doubted it compared with what Eddie's sister gave him.  Fritz was adjusting
his erection as he separated from Eddie, who must have felt it against him,
judging from the strange look he gave the prince.
  Fritz took a seat between Helge and Harriet as the party assembled in the
drawing room before dinner.  He was utterly devastating in an evening suit,
charming in conversation and perfect in his stunning beauty.  Henry did not
think it was his imagination that Harriet was beginning to be very much
affected by this seventeen-year-old demigod.  She went in to dinner on his
arm, as Helge did on Peter's.
  It was a superb setting that Sunday evening.  The grand dining room was
lit only by candles, which sparkled in the jewels of the two ladies present
and in the eyes of the young men.  Wit and laughter rippled up and down the
table.  Henry had everyone in stitches with his descriptions of working
life in the King's Cross.  Gavin sat opposite him, just smiling and looking
his satisfaction at having a lover such as Henry.
  All too early, Matt asked Oskar's permission to leave the table.  Filming
was beginning at Medeln early the next morning.  Matt wanted his crew to be
ready before sunrise, so he dragged a protesting Henry away with him.
Gavin tagged along dutifully.  Even he seemed reluctant for bed this once.

Henry and Gavin stood together under the trees in the north of the abbey
park in the early Monday morning.  The sun had just risen over the
Marienkloster, and the ground mist was dispersing.  It was more than a
little cold, making them stamp their feet and rub their hands together as
they waited for the minibus to arrive with Wardrinski from Modenehem.  They
had been up at four-thirty, in time for Matt to drive them down to the
abbey from Templerstadt at five.
  Henry had the script marked up and ready.  The Rothenian crew was milling
around drinking coffee from thermos flasks, or munching pastries provided
by the caterers.  Matt was discussing the light with the unit director.
  Henry was enormously interested in the filming process, which he had yet
to witness.  Silver reflectors, lights and sound gear were lying
everywhere.  He left Gavin sipping a mug of coffee and went over to
introduce himself to the crew as a translator if needed, and to ask them
what jobs they did.  He picked up a lot of specialised Rothenian vocabulary
very quickly.
  Eventually the minibus drew up outside the west end of the abbey, and
Professor Wardrinski came over with his minder and driver.  He exchanged a
few observations with Matt before going on to pick up breakfast.
  `Baby,' said Henry, `why don't you and I go and look in the church.  The
crew doesn't think the light will be good enough to film for another hour
or two.'
  Henry led the way round to the west doorway, where the monument's
concierge was standing looking at the film crew.  Henry greeted him in the
Rothenian way and they traded views on the weather.  The concierge told
them the church was closed to anybody other than Marlowe Productions people
that Monday, and pointed to the signs and the closed notices on the small
car park.  `It will cause trouble,' he complained.  `The Americans come in
busloads from Strelzen to get in and look for the portrait of Christ that
the book says is here somewhere.  They are not a patient people.'
  Henry looked over at the car park.  Although it was still very early,
sure enough, there was already a black SUV standing on the road outside.  A
group of men sat in it looking out the windows, apparently bored.
  After thanking the concierge, Henry and Gavin entered the dim, empty
abbey.  Their footsteps scraped and echoed, making them feel they should
whisper to each other.
  Henry had heard from Matt that the sensational tomb of the Princess Osra,
sister of King Rudolf III, was to be found in a chantry chapel.  He found
his way there, and both he and Gavin looked up at it in awe.  The princess
was in the process of bursting out of her tomb at the bodily resurrection,
putting a sinister-looking Death to flight.  She was rising to be received
by the Virgin Mary and by angels reaching down from the clouds.  Henry
pointed out to Gavin the rich death symbolism: the flaming urns, the
serpent swallowing its tail and the butterflies, to symbolise the defeat of
death and the eternity in heaven which followed resurrection.
  `What about that, then?'  Gavin gestured curiously to the princess's
sculpted robe.
  `What're you pointing at?'
  `She's wearing a brooch.'
  `She is?' Henry squinted up, and pulled over a chair to stand on so he
could get a closer look.  There was indeed a brooch pinned to the
princess's breast.  Henry let out a gasp.  `I don't believe it,' he sighed.
`She's got the same skull brooch as in the picture of Fenice's Vision.
Princess Osra has to have been one of them!'
  `One of whom?'
  `One of the Levites ... the guardians of the picture.  God!  It makes
sense.  She was abbess of this house in the eighteenth century.  She was
the one who rebuilt it.  And Fenice's tomb disappeared during that time.
It must have been Osra who moved it ... and the True Picture too!  I wonder
if the Priory of St Veronica knew that?
  `Wow!  Gavin baby, this is a seriously big discovery.  We have our first
Levite!  An Elphberg too.  Their hair will be red as copper is red.  So the
hair prophecy does make sense, at least for the red Elphbergs.  But who are
the golden-haired ones?  Fritzy says it isn't the princes of Tarlenheim,
and I believe him.'
  Gavin was excited.  `What do we do next, Henry?'
  `Er ... we think about it for a bit.  But this is a serious clue that
there's more to be discovered, and that we're on the road to discovering
what it is.  In the meantime, let's go look around the altar, where St
Fenice was once buried.'
  The two young men walked out of the north aisle chapel and up to the
simple wooden screen that partitioned off the sanctuary.  They passed
through a gate between the east end of the former nuns' stalls and the
communion rail.  Henry scanned the pavement of the steps to the high altar,
but saw no remnants of burials, just plain flagstones, clean and
straight-cut.  He imagined they had been re-laid when the EU had funded the
refurbishment of the famous abbey five years before.
  They strolled out through the opposite door of the screen and eastwards
along the ambulatory behind the high altar.  Henry knew this was the area
where major shrines were often placed in great churches, as it was near the
high altar.  Here Fenice had lain from the mid-fifteenth century until
Princess Osra's builders had swept her shrine away.  But was there any
trace of the monument now?
  Henry paced behind the altar, inspecting every flagstone closely.  It was
a while before he realised that he was on his own.  He looked around.
Gavin was huddled on a stone bench around the apse of one of the radial
chapels, where he apparently had fallen asleep.  Henry was puzzled.  Gavin
had seemed very excited, yet now he was out for the count.
  Henry went over and shook his shoulder, but got no response.  A little
alarmed, Henry looked close into Gavin's pale face.  His eyes were open and
unblinking, the pupils contracted.  His mouth was slack.  Henry shook him
again, harder, calling, `Gavin, baby.  What is it?'
  Gavin suddenly came back into focus.  `Henry?  What?'
  `You were having another funny turn, baby.  Are you alright?'
  `Yes.  I think so.  I just felt a bit dizzy and sat down, and then you
shook me.  How long was I out?'
  `Maybe ten minutes.  Has your family any history of epilepsy?'
  `No, I don't think so.  Do you suppose I've had a fit?'
  `Er ... I don't know.  Back in school, Martin Wolcombe had fits, although
he was always pretty dopey after them and also sometimes threw up.  You
seem to be OK now, but I think we'd better get you checked out by the unit
doctor.  I'll tell Matt.'
  Leaving Gavin sitting down and looking unnerved, a somewhat troubled
Henry returned to his inspection of the area.  There was no sign of any
foundations of a major structure such as a shrine, although there was room
for one at least.  Henry had just about finished when a flutter of what he
thought must have been a pigeon in the vaults made him look up.  On the
vaulting immediately above where the shrine might have been, he saw
something painted.  A haloed head and a hand giving a benediction leaned up
over Henry.  It was a Christ face and, faded though it was, its hair was
light in colour and it plainly had no beard.

Matt picked up Henry's subdued display of alarm, and Gavin was packed off
immediately to the hospital at Modenehem for a checkup.  He insisted he was
feeling fine, and was happy enough to go without Henry.  An
English-speaking Rothenian production assistant accompanied him instead.
  Henry waved them off from the car park.  Turning to go back, he noticed
the black SUV was still on the road.  When he paused to examine it, the
driver started the engine and drove off in the same direction as Gavin's
car had gone.
  Henry was urgently needed that morning.  Wardrinski was in an ebullient
mood, and Henry had to tag after him as a translator and script editor.  A
lot of the filming was for wallpaper shots, with Wardrinski pacing the
gravelled paths in the manicured grounds, or walking the aisles and staring
up at the vaults.
  There was one long scene where the professor expounded on what Bannow had
to say about St Fenice.  He was sitting in a medieval nun's stall in the
choir of the abbey.  `Somewhere here in this church,' he intoned with a
sweeping arm gesture, `was once concealed the portrait of Christ, or so we
are told.  We have followed the itinerary Dr Bannow sketched out for us,
from Syria, to Armenia, to Istanbul and Budapest, and now we end up in a
tranquil abbey set in the hills and woods of modern Rothenia.  But we find
no evidence for concealment of such a portrait.  Dr Carlovic of the
department of archaeology at the Rudolf University has scanned the choir
and found none of the secret vaults which thousands of Bannow fans come
here to look for.  There is no trace of St Fenice herself.  So we ask
again: What is the evidence?  In this case, it's a book of religious
meditations by this nunnery's abbess, which happen to centre on the face of
Christ, one of a dozen such that survive from the middle ages.  Only for Dr
Bannow, this one is different, as he claims the abbess had actually seen a
representation of the Christ face painted in His own lifetime.  What is the
evidence?  Well, none really, it has to be said.'
  Henry reflected that, what with ivories, illuminations and prophecies,
there seemed to him to be quite a lot of evidence.  He had tipped off Matt
about the remains of a Christ- face painted on the ceiling above the
shrine, and they went to look at it.  The cameraman came over too.  He set
up floods and got a good zoom shot which he displayed on his laptop.  Henry
asked him to burn the shot onto a CD for him.
  `Professor Wardrinski?' Henry could not help but ask.  `Intriguing, isn't
it, how this image and those of the Satalan basilicas a thousand miles away
show a beardless and light-haired Christ.  How would you account for that?'
  Wardrinski gave him a sharp look.  `There could be very many reasons ...
not least the eccentricity of the individual artist.  But it is clear that
the reference here is simply to the Fenice woman's book of meditations,
nothing more.  All it testifies to is a primitive belief that the eyes of
the dead retain some ability to see things around them.  Fenice is given
the opportunity to contemplate her Saviour even in death.'
  The professor went off then for a long interview with Dr Carlovic, the
archeologist who had made a detailed survey of the abbey during its recent
restoration.  Henry knew Matt was having Carlovic's data converted into
magnificent CGI reconstructions of the abbey as it was in Fenice's day.
Some of them were being displayed on a laptop as the two academics talked
to camera.
  Henry was fascinated.  Dr Carlovic had located the foundations of the
shrine and a few fragments.  From these he had extrapolated its size and
probable shape.  It had been a massive structure, looming up over the
altar, and the painted Christ face on the vault above the shrine had been
devised to look over its summit into the church, as if a gigantic Christ
had been standing behind it.  The reconstruction was eerie to say the
least.

Matt and Henry packed up and had a late lunch at an auberge that Matt knew
of.  Afterwards, they drove back to Templerstadt.  Henry ran upstairs to
find Gavin, who was lying on their bed.  `You OK, my baby?'
  Gavin smiled.  `Yeah Henry.  I'm fine, really.  The doctors did all sorts
of tests, and I don't have epilepsy or anything else they could find
quickly.  They even did a body scan.  All they could suggest was some sort
of post-viral condition.  I did have that flu in February, didn't I?'
  `What happened to you in the abbey didn't seem very post-viral to me,
baby.  It was more like you were in a trance.  Don't you remember anything
about it?'
  Gavin looked introspective for a while.  `No,' he said slowly, `not
really.  I wandered over to sit down and watch you, and I must have clicked
off.  But I do remember feeling warm and cosy first ... more than that,
really.  It was as if I were in a little cloud of warmth and something
else, maybe acceptance.'
  `Have you felt anything like that before?'
  Gavin went silent for a minute.  `You might think I'm a bit nuts, but I
started getting this feeling of ... being at home as soon as we reached
Strelzen.  It was like my heart was swelling.  It sometimes makes me feel
quite sleepy and dozy, just as when I was a tired little boy and cuddled up
to my mum, and she hugged me.'
  `Mm,' Henry mused, `then it doesn't seem to me that you're ill at all.
It's Rothenia doing something to you.  It does it to everyone.  It did it
to Rudi most of all.  When he became king he was almost a different human
being.'
  `King Rudolf?  He's coming here in a couple of days, they said
downstairs.  He flew into Strelzen this morning.'
  `Oh!  Then we'd better get your bowing and etiquette up to scratch,
baby.'