Read Mercy for Free Online Page A

savouring the tongue, really tasting it for the first time, rich and potent against his own.
    He comes back to himself, his knife stilled, the steer’s tongue lying limp in his hands. He hangs it over the basin by its tip and reaches absently for the saw. His hands know what to do. Open the skull. Lift out the hidden brain.
OREMUS
(
let us pray
)
    It’s only his second Sunday and already the crowd has thinned. From the foot of the altar August looks askance at his flock, every member lifting a hand to mirror his, as though he were manipulating them with dozens of tiny wires.
    “In nomine Patris—
” he begins. From among a sea of gestures Mathilda’s hand breaches, the lace at her wrist like a ring of foam.
    “—et Filii—”
    It dives to her breastbone.
    “—et Spiritus Sancti—”
    Swims shoulder to shoulder.
    “—Amen.”
    For several long, fidgety seconds he forgets what comes next. The altar boy stares up at him anxiously, but somehow there’s room for only a single line in his head. Not even a line so much as a scrap, something left behind by high school English, the play he hated most for the crawling desperation it made him feel.
    Juliet leans her cheek on her palm.
    Lovesick in the bushes below, Romeo groans,
O that I were a glove upon that hand
.

5
BY-PRODUCTS: BLACK PUDDING
    T homas kneads vigorously, the mixture sticky in his mighty hands. He’s read of a dozen variations but makes only one—his mother’s and her mother’s before. Nothing fancy, she taught him, hog’s blood and suet, oatmeal and onion, plenty of pepper and salt. He sells out fast every time. The Scots get a whiff of them on the boil and start circling the shop like dogs.
    He fills the stuffer, forces the spout full and slips a length of hog casing over its snout. Turning the crank, he holds the casing in place, supporting the first two inches to be sure of a solid pack. The stuffing sinks down in the hopper, transformed into dark, drooping coils. Thomas flares his nostrils to the familiar—onion pungency, pepper, the comforting goodness of grain. Mere undercurrents in a river of blood.
    Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why, after three weeks of marriage, Mathilda still curls away from him in bed, still rises so early and slips away. There’s no getting rid of it, Thomas knows, it lingers no matter how you scrub. Not a bad smell exactly, just—powerful. Come to think of it, she does avoid the shop. She’s never even set foot in the killingroom. He lets out a sigh of relief, embracing the fresh excuse. It’s the blood.
    It’s surrounded him ever since he can remember—puddling darkly, spraying bright up the walls. He’ll have to explain it to her.
It’s life
. You only have to stick a hog to understand, see how it shoots forth, how it ebbs suddenly as the heart surges its last. Lay your hand to the animal’s side and you can feel it leave. Any butcher worth his salt knows you’ll never manage a fast chill, a clean cut, without first ensuring a good bleed. Get the life out quick. Whatever’s left is yours.
HIS PREDECESSOR
    Vera takes to lying in. She leaves Father Day’s breakfast to Mathilda, even misses Mass, not showing her face until every last communicant has gone. Even then she moves laboriously, as though each swipe of her cloth causes a rending of something inside. Mathilda follows her, wiping up streaks of polish, erasing smudges from brilliant panels of glass.
    It’s Father Rock, Mathilda tells herself, believing the grief will pass. After all, it’s only been a month and a half since the funeral, precious little time to the woman who fed him thrice daily, sat by the fire and listened to his sermons take shape draft by draft, sometimes even took a pull off his sweet-smelling pipe. Then there was the bickering—never vicious, just a biweekly sparring match to keep them in shape. Maybe one of Father Rock’s dogs chewed a curtain hem or stole a chop from the stove. Vera’d get up on herhigh horse about