Sacrament (39 page)

Happiness had always sharpened Jacob's appetite for its contraries. Blithe from some successful slaughter he
would invariably make straight away for a cultured city where he could seek out a tragic play, better still an
opera, even a great painting, that would stir up the rich mud of feelings he kept settled most of the time. Then he
would indulge his passions like a reformed drunkard left amongst the brandy barrels, imbibing until he sickened
on the stuff.

Unlike happiness, however, despair only wanted its like. When he was in its thrall, as he was now, his nature
drove him to discover more of the very feelings that pained him. Others sought out palliatives for their wounds.
He looked only for a harsher grade of salt.

Until now, he'd always had a cure for this sickness. When the despair became too much for him to bear, Rosa
would be there to coax him from the brink of total collapse and restore his equilibrium. Sex had more often than
not been her means; a little hide the sausage, as she'd been fond of calling it in her more bumptious moods.
Today, however, Rosa was the cause of his despair, not its cure. Today she was dying, by his hand, her hurt too
deep to be mended. He had laid her down in the murk of their shuttered house, and at her instruction left her
there.

'I don't want you anywhere near me,' she'd said. 'Just get out of my sight.'

So he'd gone. Out of the village and up the slope of the fell, looking for a place where his despair might be
amplified. His feet knew where to take him: to the wood where the damnable child had shown him visions. He
would find plenty of fuel for his wretchedness there, he knew. There was nowhere on the planet he regretted
setting foot more than that arbour. In hindsight he'd made his first error offering the knife to Will. His second?
Not killing the boy as soon as he'd realized he was a conduit. What strange sympathy had been upon him that
night, that he'd let the brat go, knowing that Will's mind was filled with filched memories?

Even that stupidity might not have cost him so dearly if the boy had not grown up queer. But he had. And
undisturbed by the call to fecundity he'd become a far more powerful enemy - no, not enemy; something more
elaborate - than he would have been if he'd married and fathered

Steep had never been comfortable in the company of queers, but he'd felt, almost against his will, a kind of
empathy with their condition. Like him, they were obliged to be self-invented; like him, they looked in at the
rest of the tribe from its perimeters. But he would have gladly visited a holocaust on the entire clan if it would
have kept this one, this Will, from crossing his path.

Fifty yards from the wood, he halted and, looking up from his boots, surveyed the panorama. Autumn was
close; he could smell its bruising touch in the air. It was a time of the year he'd often set out walking, taking a
week or two off from his labours to explore the backwaters of England. Despite the calamities of commerce, the
country still possessed its sacred places if a traveller looked hard and carefully enough. Communing with the
ghosts of heretics and poets he had strode the country from end to end over the years: walked the straight roads
where the Behmenists had gone, and heard them call the very earth the face of God; idled in the Malvern Hills,
where Langland had dreamed of Piers Plowman; strode the flanks of barrows where pagan lords lay in beds of
earth and bronze. Not all these sites had noble histories. Some were lamentable places; fields and copses where
believers had died for their Christ. At Aldham Common, where Rowland Taylor, the good rector of Hadleigh,
had been burnt at the stake, his fire fuelled from the hedgerows that still grew green about the spot; and
Colchester, where a dozen souls or more had been cremated in a single fire for a sin of prayer. Then to more
obscure spots still; places he'd found only because he listened like a fly at a dying man's mouth. Places where
unhallowed men and women had perished for love or faith or both. He envied the dead, very often. Standing in
a ploughed field some September, crows cawing in the fleshless trees, he thought of the simplicity of those
whose dust was churned in the dirt on his boots, and wished he had been born with a plainer heart.

He would not visit these places again; not this autumn, nor ever. His life, which had been in its curious way a
model of stability, was changing: by the day, by the hour. Though he would certainly silence Rabjohns, the deed
would not repair the damage that had been done. Rosa would still die; and he would be left alone in his despair,
spiralling down and down. Given that there would be nobody to check his descent, he would keep going until he
could fall no further. Then he would perish, most likely by his own hand, and his vision of a naked earth would
be left in other, less honourable, hands.

No matter, he thought, as he resumed his trek towards the wood. There were plenty of men who were in
unwitting service of the same ideal. He'd had the questionable pleasure of meeting a host of them in his time:
crazed military men, in a few cases; many of these psychotics; a few who knew precisely the name of their evil,
and simply pleasured in it; but most - these the most interesting to speak with - men who were not personally inhumane, but who sat in their offices like bland accountants, orchestrating pogroms and ethnic cleansing for fiscal and political reasons. Whatever their natures, they were his allies to a man, as likely to wipe out a species as he, in their pursuit of ambition. Some did so in the name of profit; some in the name of freedom; some simply because they could. The reasons didn't really matter to him. What mattered was the consequences. He wanted to see Creation dwindle, family by family, tribe by tribe, from the vast to the infinitesimal, and he'd always needed the autocrats and the technocrats to help him achieve his goal. But whereas they were indiscriminate and crude, often unaware of the damage they'd done, he had always plotted
against life with the greatest precision; researching his victims like an assassin, so as to be familiar with their
habits and their hideaways. Once marked for death, few had escaped him. He knew of no finer feeling than to sit with one of the dead and record its details in his journal, knowing that when corruption had claimed the corpse he and only he possessed a record of how and when this line had passed into history.

This will not come again. Nor this. Nor this ...

He had reached the borders of the wood now. A gust of wind moved through the trees, overturning the coins
of sun on the ground. He stepped amongst them, gingerly, while the wind came again, shaking down a few early
leaves. He went directly to the place where the birds had sat that distant winter. A spring nest sat in the fork of
the branches, forsaken now that it had served its function as a nursery, but still intact. Standing at the spot where
the birds had fallen, he remembered with vile ease the vision Rabjohns had made him endure-
Simeon in the sunlight, a day from death, refusing the call of his patron, eloquent, even in his despair. And
then the same scene, a day and a moment later. Simeon dead, under the trees, his body already carrion-
Steep let out a little moan, working the heels of his hands against his eyes to press the sight from his head. But
it wouldn't go: it pulsed behind his lids, as though he were seeing it now for the first time in all its cruel
particulars: the claw marks upon Thomas's cheek and brow, where the birds had skipped as they pecked out his
eyes; the dung spattered on his thigh, where some animal had voided itself while sniffing around; the curl of
golden hair at his groin, miraculously untouched though the manhood it had nestled had been ripped away, and
left the place all blood, but for this tuft.

He did not imagine that killing the conduit would heal his deepening anguish. He was in its thrall now, and
would be swallowed utterly. But when he finally succumbed to it, he would do so with his wits his own. There
would be no trespasser amongst his thoughts, treading where his griefs lay tenderest. He would die alone, in the
belly of his despair, and nobody would know what last thoughts visited him there.

It was time to go. He had put off the moment long enough, fearful of his own weakness. He would have liked to
have his knife in his hands as he strode down the hill - it knew the business of slaughter more intimately than
even he. But no matter. Murder was an old art; older than the beating of blades. He would find some means by
which to do the deed before the moment was upon him. A rope; a hammer; a pillow. And if all else failed, he
had his hands. Yes, perhaps that was best, to do it with his hands. It was honest, and simple, and like the error
that would be connected with the deed, the work of flesh and flesh. The neatness of this pleased him, and in his
present state a little pleasure, however it was won, was not to be despised.

There had been no butcher's shop in Burnt Yarley since the passing of Delbert Donnelly, and since the
demolition of the Courthouse, no Donnellys either. His daughter Marjorie and her family had gone to live in
Easdale, and his widow had departed for the high life in Lytham St Armes. The shop had passed through several
hands - it had been a hairdresser's, a thrift shop, a greengrocer's and was now once again a hairdresser's. The
Donnellys' residence, however, had never been sold. There was no suspicious reason for this - Delbert was not
reported to walk its bare boards, chomping on pork pies - it was simply an ugly, charmless house that had been
overpriced for the market. For a buyer interested in privacy it was an ideal purchase, however, surrounded as it
was by a seven-foot privet hedge which had once been Delbert's pride and joy. Had he paid as much attention to
his personal appearance as he had to his hedge, some had observed, he would have been the smartest man in
Yorkshire. Well, Delbert was probably more unkempt than ever, under St Luke's sod, and his hedge had run
riot. These days the Donnelly house could barely be seen from the road.

'Whatever made you think of bringing Rosa here?' Frannie asked Sherwood as he pushed open the gate.

He gave her a guilty look. 'I've been coming here on and off as long as it's been empty,' he said.

'Why?'

'Dunno,' he said. 'So I could be on my own.'

'So all those times I thought you were out walking the hills you were here?'

'Not always. But a lot of the time.' He picked up his pace to get a little ahead of Frannie and Will, then turning
said: 'I have to go in without you. I don't want you frightening her.'

'Frannie should stay out here by all means,' Will said. 'But you're not going in alone. Steep may be in there.'

'Then the three of us go in,' Frannie said. 'No ifs, ands or buts.' And so saying she strode up the gravel path to
the front door, leaving the men to catch up. The front door was open, the interior relatively bright. The source of
illumination was not electric light but two gaping holes, the larger six foot wide, in the roof, courtesy of the
storms that had raged the previous February. Ninety-mile gusts had stripped off the slates and icy rains had pummelled the boards to tinder. Now the day shone in.

'Where is she?' Will whispered to Sherwood.

'In the dining-room,' he replied, nodding down the hall. There were three doors to choose from, but Will didn't
have to guess. From the furthest of them came Rosa's voice. It was weak, but there was no doubting its
sentiments.

'Don't come near me. I don't want anyone near me.'

'It's not Jacob,' Will said, going to the door and pushing it open. There were shutters at the window, and they
were almost closed, leaving the room murky. But he found her readily enough, lying against the wall to the right
of the chimney breast, her bags around her. She sat up when he entered, though with much effort.
'Sherwood?' she said.

'No. It's Will.'

'I used to be able to hear so clearly,' Rosa said. 'So he hasn't found you yet?'

'Not yet. But I'm ready when he does.'

'Don't deceive yourself,' she said. 'He'll kill you.'

'I'm ready for that, too.'

'Stupid,' she murmured, shaking her head. 'I heard a woman's voice-'

'It's Frannie. Sherwood's sister.'

'Bring her here,' Rosa said. 'I need tending to.'

'I can do it.'

'You will not,' she said. 'I want a woman to do it. Go on,' she said.

Will returned to the hallway. Sherwood was closer to the door, eager to be inside. But Will told him: 'She
wants Frannie.'

'But I-'
'That's what she wants,' Will replied. Then to Frannie: 'She says she needs tending to. I don't think she'll let us
take her to a doctor. But try and persuade her.'

Frannie looked more than a little doubtful, but after a moment's hesitation she slid past Sherwood and Will,
and entered.

'She is going to die?' Sherwood said, very softly.

'I don't know,' Will told him. 'She's lived a very long life. Maybe it's time.'
'I won't let her,' Sherwood said.

Frannie was back at the door. 'I need some gauze and some bandages,' she said. 'Go back to the house,
Sherwood, and bring whatever you can find. Is there still running water in the house?'

'Yes,' said Sherwood.

'You can't persuade her to let us take her to a doctor?'

'She won't go. And I don't think they'd be able to do much for her anyway.'

'It's that bad?'

'It's not just that it's bad. It's strange. It's not like any wound I ever saw before,' she shuddered. 'I don't know if I
can bring myself to touch her again.' She glanced at Sherwood. 'Will you go?' she said.

He was like a dog being sent from the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder as he went to be certain he wasn't
missing a scrap. At last, he made it to the front door and slipped away.

'What do we do once she's bandaged up?' Frannie wanted to know.

'Let me speak to her,' Will said.

'She said she didn't want either of you in there.'

'She's going to have to put up with it,' Will said. 'Excuse me.'

Frannie stood aside, and Will stepped back into the room. It was darker than it had been a few minutes before,
and warmer; both changes, he guessed, brought about by Rosa's presence. He couldn't even see her at first, the
shadow around the mantelpiece had become so dense. While he was trying to work out where in the darkness
she was standing, she said:

'Go away.'

Her voice gave him her whereabouts. She had moved four or five yards to the corner of the room farthest from
the door. The shutters, which were to her left, remained open a little way, but the daylight fluttered at the sill,
stopped from entering by the miasma she was giving off.

'We need to talk,' Will said.

'About what?'

'What you need from me,' he said, attempting his most conciliatory tone.

'I killed your father,' she said softly. 'And you want to help me? You'll forgive me if I'm suspicious.'

'You were under Steep's influence,' Will said, taking a tentative step towards her. Even that stride was enough to
thicken the atmosphere around him. Though he stared hard into the corner where she stood the murk resembled
a picture taken in too low a light-level: a patch of granular grey.

'Under Steep's influence? Me?' She laughed in the darkness. 'Listen to you! He needs me a lot more than I need
him.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really. He's going to go crazy without me. If he hasn't already. I was the one who kept his feet on the
ground.'

Will had perhaps halved the distance between the door and the corner of the room while she spoke, but he was
no closer to seeing Rosa. 'I wouldn't come any nearer if I were you,' she warned.

'Why not?'

'I'm coming apart,' she said. 'I'm unknitting. It's a dange:ous place for you to be right now.'

'And Frannie?'

'She's fine. Women are a lot less susceptible. If she can seal me up, I may survive a day or two.'

'But you won't heal?'

'I don't want to heal!' she replied. 'I want to find my way back to Rukenau, and I'll be happy...' She drew a
deep, ragged breath. 'You asked me what I needed from you,' she said.

'Yes...'

'Take me to him.'

'Do you know where he is?'

'On the island.'

'Which island?'

'I don't think I ever knew. But you know where he is-'

'No, I don't.'

-but in the garden.'

'I was bluffing.'

There was a sound of motion from the corner of the room, and a wave of heat came against Will's face. He felt
slightly sickened, and was sorely tempted to retreat to the door. But he held his ground, while the murk in front
of him coalesced, and he began to see Rosa in its midst. She was like a phantom of her former self, her
once-luxurious hair falling straight to either side of her hollow-eyed face. She had her hands clamped to the
wound, but she could not entirely conceal its strangeness. There were motes of pale matter, some glinting like
gold, skittering over her fingers. Some trailed up her body, clinging to her breasts. Others flew like sparks from
a bonfire, and exhausting themselves in their flight, were extinguished.

'So you can't deliver me to Rukenau?' she said.

'I can't take you straight to him, no,' Will confessed. 'But that doesn't mean-'

'Just another liar-'

'I had no choice.'

-you're all the same.'

'He was going to kill me.'

'It wouldn't have been any great loss,' she said sourly. 'One liar more or less. Just go away!'

'Hear me out-'

'I've heard all I want to hear,' she said, starting to turn from him.

Without thinking, he moved towards her, intending another appeal. She caught the motion from the corner of
her eye, and thinking perhaps he meant her some harm she reeled around. In that instant the fragments of
brightness on her hands found purpose. They grew frenetic, and in a heartbeat fused, flying from her body in a
bright thread. It came at Will too fast for him to avoid it, grazing his shoulder as it snaked towards the ceiling. A fleeting contact, but enough to throw him off-balance. He reeled for a moment, his legs so weak they refused to bear him up. Then he sank down to his knees while a kind of euphoria ran through him, its source the place where the thread had grazed his flesh. He felt, or imagined he felt, its energy spreading through his body, sinew, nerve and marrow illuminated by its passage; blood brightening, senses shining-He saw the thread on the ceiling now, dividing again, like a string of tiny pearls dropped in defiance of gravity, and snapping. They rolled away in every direction, the weaker ones going out on the instant, the stronger striking the walls before they ran out of light.
Will watched them as he might have watched a meteor shower, head back, mouth wide. Only when every one
had been extinguished did he look back at their source. Rosa had retreated to her corner, but Will's eyes had
been lent an uncanny strength by the luminescence, and in the moments before it died in him he saw her as he
had never seen before. There was a creature of burnished shadow in the midst of her; dark and sleek and
protean. A creature held in check by all that she'd become over the years, like a painting so degraded by
accruals of grime and varnish and the hands of inept restorers that its glory was now no longer visible. And just
as surely as his revelatory gaze saw through to the core of her, so she in her turn saw something miraculous in
him.

'So tell me,' she said, her voice low, 'when did you become a fox?'

'Me?' he said.

'It moves in you,' she replied, staring at him, 'I can see it there, plainly.'

He looked down at his body, half expecting the power that had emanated from her to have worked some
physical change in him. Absurd, of course; it was still pale, sweaty flesh he was looking down at. More
disappointing still, the last of the light was going out in him. He could feel its gift passing away, and was
already mourning it.

'Steep was right about you,' she said. 'You're quite a creature. To have a spirit move in you that way, and not
be driven crazy.'

'Who says I haven't been driven crazy?' he said, thinking of the troubled path that had brought him to this
possession. 'You know that I see something in you, don't you?'

'If you do then look away,' she said.

'I don't want to. It's beautiful.' The burnished creature was still visible, but only just: its alien elegance
receding into Rosa's wounded substance. 'Oh Lord,' he murmured. 'I've just realized, I've seen this before. This
body inside you.'

She didn't speak for a moment, as though she couldn't make up her mind whether to be drawn into this
enquiry or not. But she could not resist. 'Where?' she said.

'In a painting,' he said. 'By Thomas Simeon. He called it the Nilotic.'

She shuddered at the syllables. 'Nilotic?' she said. 'What is that?'

'Somebody who lives on the Nile.'

'I was never.. .' she shook her head; began again, '... I remember an island,' she said, '... but not a river. Not
that river, at least. The Amazon, yes. I went with Steep to the Amazon to kill butterflies. But ... never the Nile .
. .' her voice was fading as she spoke, and the last of her other self disappeared from sight. 'Yet ... there's truth
in what you say. Something moves in me as the fox moves in you...'

'And you want to know what it is.'

'Only Rukenau knows that,' she said. 'Will you take me to Rukenau? You're a fox. You can sniff him out.'

'And you think he'll explain it.'

'I think if he can't, then nobody can.'

He found Frannie sitting at the bottom of the stairs, reading a yellow and welltrodden newspaper she'd found in
one of the rooms. 'How's she doing?' she asked.

He clung to the door frame, his limbs still weak. 'She wants to find Rukenau. That's about the only thing in her
mind right now.'

'And where's he?'

'If he's anywhere, he's up in the Hebrides, where the book said he went. She doesn't know what island.'

'Do you want us to take her?'

'Not us. Me. If you can bandage her up, I'll take over from there.'

Frannie closed the newspaper and tossed it to the dusty boards. 'And what do you thinks on this island?'

'Worst case scenario: a lot of birds. Best case? Rukenau; and the Domus Mundi, whatever the hell that is.'

'So you're suggesting I should stay here while you go off and see?' Frannie said with a tight little smile. 'No,
Will. This is my moment too. I was there at the beginning. And I'm going to be there at the end.'

Before Will could respond the front door was pushed open, and Sherwood came in, nursing a bag of
medications. 'I've brought every bandage I could find,' he said, dumping the bag in Frannie's arms.

'All right,' said Will. 'Here's the plan. I'm going to go back to my Dad's house and tell Adele I've got to leave

'Where are you going?' Sherwood wanted to know.