Sold to a Marseille Don, So He Knelt at My Father's Grave novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Mass
On Sunday I took him to the Corsican Mass, and I put him in my father's pew.
The chapel stood at the top of a stair street in the Panier, small and whitewashed, with a blue door and a cold stone floor.
Every Corsican family in the quarter had its bench, and the Santoni bench had a brass plate on the end with my grandfather's name.
I sat down and moved over, and Antone sat beside me.
He had not been inside a Santoni pew in his life.
Forty heads turned in the aisle, and then turned back.
My uncle's place at the end of the bench stood empty.
Nobody had seen him since Christmas Eve.
The priest said the first words in Corsican, and the men in the front rows answered.
Then they began to sing.
It was the old singing, three men's voices without an organ, one low and two high, and the sound filled the chapel to the roof beams.
My mother used to cry when she heard it, and she never told me why.
I did not understand a word, and I felt every one of them in my chest.
Antone stood beside me with his hands folded in front of him.
He did not sing, and he did not speak.
He stood the whole Mass with his shoulder an inch from mine, and when the men's voices rose on the last verse I felt him breathe in sharply.
I looked up.
His eyes were bright and fixed on the altar, and his jaw was locked.
I did not touch his hand.
I only moved my shoulder the inch, so that it rested against his arm.
He did not move away.
At the end of the Mass the congregation went out into the pale morning, in black coats and good scarves.
I stopped at the blue door with Antone behind me.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sold to a Marseille Don, So He Knelt at My Father's Grave are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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