The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

exactly true, Harry Jones had worked his magic, but it had made me realise I’d been doing too much. So, on my way to the Bishops’, to reassure them I was still working on their case, but had nothing new to report, I’d promised myself to go home early, start writing my crime report for the end of the month.

I’d decided to write about a gang of juvenile pickpockets who’d been jumping off and on trams in the Eastern Suburbs, and to make the article about child poverty and how we, as a community, should be looking after street children from poor backgrounds. I’d also needed to check the newspapers for a film to see while Harry was away over the weekend, and to call past the fishmonger on my way back to the office to buy a treat for the boss of the house.

*****

On Friday morning, when I arrived at Luka’s shop to wait with him for Vince’s phone call, Gălbenele was nowhere to be seen. Luka told me that every Friday, early in the morning, she spent time studying. Although his was slipping, she was determined not to lose their parents’ language, and she put aside a few hours once a week reading and writing in Romanian.

Harry arrived at about quarter to nine, just in time for Luka’s sister to arrive with a tray of their strong sweet coffee, accompanied by slices of what I recognised was my fruit cake. On Wednesday night, when he’d come for dinner, I’d given one to Luka to take home, in exchange for his biscuit recipe.

“You look tired, Clyde,” Harry said as he hugged me. “I thought you were going to have an early night?”

“I did what I promised. Wrote a page or two of my article, listened to the wireless, spent some thinking time in the shower, got into bed and read for a while, but then I woke at four in the morning with a sudden thought, so jumped up and did some more work at my desk.”

“I have to chain him to the bed,” Harry said. He was not unused to my sudden leaps into action in the wee hours of the morning.

“Now, there’s an image I might find hard to dismiss from my mind,” Luka said with a wink.

Despite myself, I blushed. Gălbenele found the fact I’d coloured very amusing. She smiled at me over the top of her coffee cup.

*****

Not more than twenty minutes later, after Vince’s promised phone call, I pulled up in the driveway outside the door that led to the forensics office.

“Ready for this, Luka?” I asked.

“Just as ready as you are when you walk into work every morning, Clyde. It’s my job. My body might pay for it, but I have no fear of what I might find out. Who knows? Perhaps there’ll be nothing?”

I introduced Luka to Jack and then to Vince, who seemed genuinely pleased to meet him. They were of an age and had the same dark, broody looks.

Jack had placed the statuette near the edge of his stainless-steel examination table in front of the large paned window that covered almost one wall of his workroom. He’d covered it with a mortuary sheet.

“She hasn’t touched the ground or been placed on the ground, has she?” Luka asked Jack, who shook his head.

“Some of the gilding is coming off her face and her hands and feet,” Jack explained. “It’s nothing we’ve done, it’s just that the gilt wasn’t expertly applied.”

“She’s trying to show her true face,” Luka replied and then kneeled in front of the veiled statue, clasping his hands, his head bowed, murmuring softly.

Vince, Harry, and I leaned against the surgical cabinet, while Jack sat at his desk and lit his pipe.

“She was stolen by Christianity,” Luka said. “The black-faced Saint Sarah started out being called Ishtari, in the Rhone area of France. She was originally Astarte, the mother goddess of the Canaanites, crossed over in legend with Isis, the Egyptian goddess of all women and mother of Horus. She was stolen by the priests and turned into a saint of their own. It’s strange how the church has absorbed the old religions and made them their own, isn’t it? We Romany people venerate her with all three facets of who she is: the goddess from the ancient Middle East, the winged goddess of pharaonic Egypt, and her modern-day incarnation, that of the holy Saint Sarah. To my people, she’s associated with water and miracles concerning the sea, but most importantly the giving of alms and unexpected gifts.”

He picked up a corner of the cloth covering the statue and pressed it first to the centre of his forehead, then to his lips, and finally rubbed it over the top of his head.

“You probably wonder why I’m telling you this now,” he said over his shoulder.

“Well, I’m certainly interested,” Harry said.

“Because the Roman Catholic church believed she was the African maid of Mary Jacobe, one of the Three Marys who fled the Holy Land after the crucifixion. They travelled across the Mediterranean in a boat, but when they reached the shores of France, the seas were too rough to disembark. Sarah guided the boat close to shore and then walked across the water to land. In the eyes of the Church, it was her miracle. It’s what I’ll have to do when the visions take me, that’s why I’m telling you her history. Saint Sarah is always there to hold my hand while I walk across the water that divides the present time and my memories, catching wisps of information on the way for which I have no explanation. These inexplicable bits and pieces—visions, objects, places, faces—are what I consider her gifts to me. Her name is the last thing I remember before the world goes blank, and the first thing I remember when I wake up.”

I waited a short while before I spoke. “Is there anything we should do before you …?”

He chuckled and turned to smile at me. “No,