Blood on Satan's Claw: or, The Devil's Skin
- eBook
- Hardcover
- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
Release date: August 8, 2023
Publisher: Unbound
Print pages: 224
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Author updates
Blood on Satan's Claw: or, The Devil's Skin
Robert Wynne-Simmons
The Interests of the Reverend Fallowfield
he Reverend Lucian Fallowfield was a simple man, or that was how he liked to see himself. When asked about his religious beliefs, he would answer, ‘I am a gentle Puritan.’ That was why, when, by chance, he was offered a living in the country, in a place called Chapel Folding, the very name of it immediately appealed to him. A Protestant monarch was safely on the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the threat of Catholicism had passed. The religious wars, which he had found so distasteful, were now at an end. Buried in the countryside, in a simple parish, he could put all that savagery behind him. The roars of the hell-fire preachers would no longer ring in his ears, and the stench of the last witch-burning would no longer remain in his nostrils. He could breathe pure fresh air in the open countryside, and whenever he thought of Chapel Folding he imagined a small, whitewashed chapel, such as Saint Francis of Assisi might have built, surrounded by fields of wheat and barley. There, like Saint Francis, he would be able to communicate with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, and find peace and godliness.
The reality was, of course, not exactly as he had imagined. The fields were there, as he had pictured them, but they formed a small oasis among dense woods and hills. The village had been difficult for him to find, as there were no signposts, and the roads were winding and muddy. Also, there was no chapel. Instead, there was an old, imposing church with a tower, but it stood aloof from the rest of the community as if it did not belong. The village, which was mostly made up of large interconnecting farms and their cottages, had turned its back on the church, probably because the original houses had crumbled away following the Black Death, and nobody had liked to build there since. He had thought that the church would be at the centre of the community, but it felt neglected and was poorly preserved. As a new and inexperienced vicar of the parish, the curious position of its church reinforced his own sense of being an outsider. Nevertheless, he soon had the old vestry whitewashed, and turned into a schoolroom for the local children. He was a strong believer in the openness and innocence of childhood, and although he could see in his congregation quite a few angry old curmudgeons, fixed in their dark ways, he had hopes that he could transform the village through its offspring, and he told them so in his sermons.
At first his classes had been poorly attended, but over time, in ones and twos, new children joined him, when their parents decided that it was safe to let their sons and daughters be taught by this Puritanical stranger. It surprised him how little their children knew about the basic story of the gospels, and how confused they were about Christianity in general.
‘John the Baptist used to drown people in the river, until they caught him and chopped his head off!’ said one little boy, gleefully.
Before he arrived in Chapel Folding, Fallowfield had been warned by the bishop that in some of these rural communities the people were barely Christian at all. He had not believed it at first, but then he began to understand what the bishop meant.
At the end of the working day, after the last pupil had gone home, and the sunlight was slowly swallowed by the surrounding woodland, he would often linger outside the church and look up at its castellated tower, from the corners of which small stone figures were grinning down at him. As the bats flew out at twilight, circling around them, they grew more alive, and on days when the children had been most obtuse, it seemed as if they were deliberately mocking all his attempts at achieving his Puritan ideals. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...