Sacrament (43 page)

It had always been Steep's preference, when he was about the business of slaughtering mating couples, to kill the
male first. If he was dealing with the last of a species, of course - which was his great and glorious labour - the
dispatch of both genders was academic. All he needed to do was kill one to ensure that the line was ended. But
he liked to be able to kill both, for neatness' sake, starting with the male. He had a number of practical reasons
for this. In most species the male was the more aggressive of the sexes, and for his own protection it made sense
to incapacitate the husband before the wife. He'd also observed that females were more likely to demonstrate
grief at the demise of their mates, in the throes of which they could be readily killed. The male, by contrast,
became vengeful. All but two of the serious injuries he'd sustained over the years had come from males that he
had unwisely left to kill after the female, that had thrown themselves upon him with suicidal abandon. A
century and a half since the extinction of the great auk on the cliffs of St Kilda, and he still bore the scar on his
forearm where the male had opened him up. And in cold weather there was still an ache in his thigh where a
blaubok had kicked him, seeing its lady bleeding to death before its eyes.

Both were painful lessons. But more painful than either the scars or the ill-knit bones was the memory of those
males who had, through some failing of his, outmanoeuvred him and escaped. It had happened seldom, but
when it had he had mounted heroic searches for the escapee, driving Rosa to distraction with his doggedness.
Let the brute go, she'd tell him, ever the pragmatist; just let him die of loneliness.

Oh, but that was what haunted him. The thought of a rogue animal out in the wild, circling its territory, looking
for something that was its like, and coming back at last to the place where its mate had perished, seeking a
vestige of her being - a scent, a feather, a shard of bone - was almost unbearable. He had caught fugitives
several times under such circumstances; waiting for them to return to that fatal place, and murdering them on
the spot where they mourned. But there were some animals that escaped him completely, whose final hours
were not his to have dominion over, and these were a source of great distress to him. He dreamed and imagined
them for months after. Saw them wandering in his mind's eye; growing ragged, growing rogue. And then, when a season or two had passed, and they had not encountered any of their own species, losing the will to live; fleabitten and bony-shanked, becoming phantoms of veldt or forest or ice floe, until they finally gave up all hope, and died.

He would always know when this finally happened; or such was his conviction. He would feel the animal's
passing in his gut, as though a physical procedure as real as digestion had come to its inevitable end. Another
dinning thing had gone into memory (and into his journal) never to be known again.

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

It was no accident that his thoughts turned to these rogues as he travelled north. He felt like one of their pitiful
number now. Like a creature without hope, returning to its ancestral ground. In his case, of course, he was not
looking for signs of his lady-wife. Rosa was still alive (it was her trail he was following, after all) and he would
certainly not mope over her remains when she passed away. Yet for all his eagerness to be rid of her, the
prospect left him lonely.

The night had not gone well for him. The car he'd stolen in Burnt Yarley had broken down a few miles outside
Glasgow, and he had abandoned it, planning to steal a more reliable vehicle at the next service station. It turned
out to be quite a trek; two hours walking beside the highway, while a cold drizzle fell. He'd make sure he stole a
Japanese car next time, he thought. He liked the Japanese; an enthusiasm he'd shared with Rosa. She'd liked
their delicacy and their artifice; he liked their cars and their cruelty. They had a nice indifference to the censure
of hypocrites, which he admired. They needed shark fins for their soup? They took them, and dumped the rest
of the carcasses back in the sea. They wanted whale oil for the lamps? Dammit, they'd hunt the whales, and tell
the bleeding hearts to go sob on someone else's doorstep.

He found a shining new Mitsubishi at the next service station, and well pleased with his acquisition, went on his
way through the night. But his melancholy thoughts would not be banished; they returned again to memories of
murder. There was a simple reason he kept his mind circling on these grim images; it kept an even grimmer
memory at bay. But that memory refused to be dispatched to the bay of his skull. Though he filled his head with
blood and despair, the thought returned and returned

Will had kissed him. Oh God in Heaven, the queer had kissed him, and lived to boast about it. How was that
possible? How? And why, though he'd wiped his hand back and forth across his mouth until his lips were raw,
did they only remember the touch better with each assault? Was there some shameful part of him that had taken
pleasure in the violation?

No. No. There was no such part. In others maybe, in weaker men, but not in him. He had simply been taken by
surprise, expecting a blow and getting filth instead. A lesser man might have spat the kiss in his violator's face.
But for a man as pure as he, unmoved by doubt or ambiguity, the kiss had been worse than any blow. Was it any
wonder he felt it still? And would continue to feel it, no doubt, until he had the slivers of his enemy's lips
between his fingers, pared from his face.

By six in the morning he had reached Dumbarton, and the sky was brightening in the east. Another day
beginning; another round of trivialities for the human herd. He saw the morning rituals underway in the street
through which he drove. Curtains drawn back to waken the children, milk collected off the doorsteps for the
morning tea; a few early commuters trudging to the bus-stop or the railway-station, still half in dreams. They
had no idea what their world was coming to; nor, if they'd been told, would they have cared or understood. They
just wanted to get through their day, and have the bus or the train deliver them home again, safe and sound.

His mood lightened watching them. They were such clowns. How could he not be amused? On through
Helensburgh and Garelochhead he drove, the narrow road becoming heavily trafficked as the day proceeded,
until at length he reached the town he'd long ago realized was his destination: Oban. It was seven forty-five. The
ferry, he was told, had sailed on time.

Will, Frannie and Rosa had boarded The Claymore at six-thirty. Though the morning air was on the nippy side
of bracing, they were happy to be out of the car, which had become a little ripe towards the end of the night, and
into the open air. And Lord, was the day fine, the sun rising in a cloudless sky.

'Ye canna ask for a nicer day to be sailing,' the sailor who'd stowed their car had observed. 'It'll be as calm as a
lily pond all the way out tae the islands.'

Frannie and Will made for the ship's bathrooms, to wash the sleep out of their eyes. The facilities were modest
at best, but they both emerged looking a little more presentable, and went back on deck to discover Rosa seated
at the bows of The Claymore. Of the three, she looked the least travelworn. There was a freshness to her pallor
and a brightness in her eyes that utterly belied her wounded state.

'I'll be fine just sitting here,' she said, like an old lady who wanted to be as little bother as possible to her
companions. 'Why don't you two go off and have some breakfast?'

Will offered to bring her something, but she told him no, she was quite happy as she was. They left her to her
solitude, and with a short detour to the stern to watch the harbour receding behind them, the town pictureperfect
in the warming sun, they went below to the dining-room, and sat down to a breakfast of porridge, toast and tea.

'They won't recognize me if I ever get back to San Francisco,' Will said. 'Cream, butter, porridge ... I can feel
my arteries clogging up just looking at it.'

'So what do people do for fun in San Francisco?'

'Don't ask.'

'No. I want to know, for when I come over and see you.'

'Oh, you're going to come see me?'

'If you'll have me. Maybe at Christmas,' she replied. 'Is it warm at Christmas?'

'Warmer than here. It rains, of course. And it's foggy.'

'But you like the city?'

'I used to think it was Paradise,' he said. 'Of course, it's a different place from when I first arrived.'

'Tell me,' she said.

The prospect defeated him. 'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

'Tell me about your friends. Your ... lovers?' She ventured this tentatively, as though she wasn't sure she had
her vocabulary right. 'It's so different from anything I've ever experienced.'

So he gave a guided tour of life in Boys' Town, over the tea and toast. A quick verbal gazetteer to begin with;
then a little about the house on Sanchez Street, and on to the people in his circle. Adrianna, of course (with a
footnote on Cornelius), Patrick and Rafael, Drew, Jack Fisher, even a quick jaunt across the Bay for a snapshot
of Bethlynn. 'You said at the beginning it had all changed,' Frannie reminded him.

'It has. A lot of people I knew when I first lived there are dead. Men my age; some of them younger. There are a
lot of funerals. A lot of men in mourning. It changes the way you look at your life. You start to think: maybe
none of it's worth a damn.'

'You don't believe that,' Frannie said.

'I don't know what I believe,' he told her. 'I don't have the same faith you have.'

'It must be hard when you're in the middle of so much death. It's like an extinction.'

'We're not going anywhere,' Will said with unshakeable conviction, 'because we don't come from anywhere.
We're spontaneous events. We just appear in the middle of families. And we'll keep appearing. Even if the
plague killed every homosexual on the planet, it wouldn't be extinction, because there's queer babies being born
every minute. It's like magic.' He grinned at the notion. 'You know, that's exactly what it is. It's magic.'

'I'm afraid you've lost me.'

'I'm just playing,' he laughed.

'What's so funny?'

'This,' he said, slowly spreading his arms to take in the table, then Frannie, then the rest of the dining-room. 'Us
sitting talking like this. Queer politics over the porridge. Rosa sitting up there, hiding her secret self. Me down
here talking about mine.' He leaned forward. 'Doesn't it strike you as a little funny?' She stared at him blankly.
'No, I'm sorry. I'm getting out of hand.'

The conversation was here interrupted by the waiter, a ruddy-faced man with an accent Will found initially
unintelligible, asking them if they had finished. They had. Leaving him to clear the table, they headed up on
deck. The wind had strengthened considerably in the hour or so they'd been breakfasting, and the greyblue
waters of the Sound, though far from choppy, were flecked with spume. To the left of them, the hills of the
Island of Mull, purple with heather, to the right the slopes of the Scottish mainland, more heavily wooded, with
here and there signs of human habitation - most humble, some grand - set on the higher elevations. An aerial wake of herring gulls followed the ship, diving to pluck pieces of food, courtesy of the galley,
out of the water. When the birds were sated, they settled on the ship, their clamour silenced, and beadily
watched their fellow passengers from the railings and the lifeboats.

'They've got an easy life,' Frannie observed as another well-fed gull came to perch amongst its brethren. 'Catch
the morning ferry, have breakfast, then catch the next one home.'

'They're practical buggers, gulls,' Will said. 'They'll feed on anything. Look at that one! What's he eating?'

'Coagulated porridge.'

'Is it? Oh hell, it is! Straight down!'

Frannie wasn't watching the gull, she was watching Will. 'The look on your face-'she said.

'What?'

'I'd have thought you'd be tired of watching animals by now.'

'Not a chance.'

'Were you always like this? I don't think you were.'

'No. I owe it to Steep. Of course he had ulterior motives. First you see it, then you kill it.'

'Then you put it in your scrapbook,' Frannie added. 'All neat and tidy.'

'And quiet,' Will said.

'Was quiet important?'

'Oh yes. He thinks we'll hear God better that way.'

Frannie mused on this a moment. 'Do you think he was born crazy?' she finally said.

There was another silence. Then Will said: 'I don't think he was born.'

The ferry was coming into Tobermory, its first and last stop before they slipped from the Sound and out into the
open sea. They watched the approach from the bow, where Rosa was still seated. Tobermory was a small town,
barely extending beyond the quayside, and the ship was at the dock no more than twenty minutes (long enough
to unload three cars and a dozen passengers) before it was on its way. The swell became noticeably heavier
once they cleared the northern tip of Mull, the waves bristling with white surf.

'I hope it doesn't get any worse than this,' Frannie remarked, 'or I'm going to get sea-sick.'

'We're in treacherous waters,' Rosa remarked; these the first words she'd uttered since Frannie and Will had
joined her. 'The straits between Coll and Tiree are notorious.'

'How do you know?'

'I had a chat with young Hamish over there,' she said, nodding a sailor who was lounging against the railing ten yards from where Rosa sat.

'He's barely old enough to shave,' Will replied.

'Are you jealous then?' Rosa chuckled. 'Don't worry, I'm not going to do the dirty with him. Not in my present
state. Though Lord knows he's a pretty thing, don't you think?'

'He's a little young for me.'

'Oh there's no such thing as too young,' Rosa said. 'If he can get hard he's old enough. That's always been my
theory.'

Frannie's face reddened with fury and embarrassment. 'You're disgusting, you know that?' she said, and stalked
off down the deck.

Will went after her, to calm her down, but she could not be calmed.

'That's how she got her claws into Sherwood,' she said. 'I've always suspected it. And there she is, crowing
about it.'

'She didn't mention Sherwood.'

'She didn't have to. God, she's sickening. Sitting there lusting after some fifteen-year-old. I won't have anything
more to do with her, Will.'

'Just put up with it for a few more hours,' Will said. 'We're stuck with her till we find Rukenau.'

'She doesn't know where she's going any more than we do,' Frannie said.

Will didn't say so, but he was tempted to agree. He'd hoped that by now Rosa would be in a more focused frame
of mind; that the voyage would have somehow aroused buried memories in her: something to prepare them for
whatever lay ahead. But if she felt anything, she was concealing it very effectively. 'Maybe it's time I had a
heart to heart with her,' Will said.

'She hasn't got a heart,' Frannie said. 'She's just a dirty-minded old ... whatever she is.' She glanced up at him.
'Go talk to her. You won't get any answers. Just keep her away from me.' With that she headed off towards the
stern. Will almost went after her to try to placate her further, but what was the use? She had every right to her
disgust. For himself, however, he found it impossible to feel any great horror at who or what Rosa was, despite
the fact that she'd taken Hugo's life. He puzzled over this as he returned to the bow. Was there some flaw in his
nature that kept him from feeling the revulsion Frannie felt?

He was stopped in his tracks by two gulls, who came swooping down in front of him to squabble over a crust of
waterlogged bread one of them had dropped in flight. It was a vicious and raucous set-to, beaks stabbing, wings
thrashing, and as he watched it played out he had his question answered. He watched Rosa the way he watched
the gulls. The way, in fact, he'd watched thousands of animals over the years. He made no moral judgments
about her because they weren't applicable. There was no use judging her by human standards. She was no more
human than the gulls squabbling in front of him. Perhaps that was her tragedy: perhaps, like the gulls, it was her glory.

'It was just a little joke,' Rosa said when he came back to sit beside her. 'That woman's got no sense of humour.'
The Claymore was swinging around, and a lowlying island was coming into view. 'Hamish tells me this is Coll,'
Rosa said, getting up and leaning against the railing.

The island was in stark contrast to the lush wooded slopes of Mull; flat and undistinguished.

'I don't suppose you recognize any of this?' Will asked her.

'No,' she said. 'But this isn't where we're getting off. This is the sister island. Tiree's much more fertile. The
Land of Corn, they used to call it.'

'Did you get all this from Hamish?' Rosa nodded. 'Useful lad,' Will said.

'Men have their uses,' she said. 'But you know that.' She gave Will a shy little glance. 'You live in San
Francisco, yes?'

'Yes.'

'I love that city. There used to a drag bar on Castro Street I'd always frequent when we were in the city. I forget
its name now, but it was owned by a lovely old queen called Lenny something or other. This amuses you?'

'Somewhat. The idea of you and Steep in a drag bar.'

'Oh, Steep was never with me. It would have sickened him. But I always enjoyed the company of men who like
to play the woman. My sweet viados in Milan; oh my, some of them were so beautiful.'

If the conversation over breakfast had been strange, this was a damn sight stranger, Will thought. Just about the
last thing he'd expected to do on this voyage was to listen to Rosa extol the virtues of cross-dressing.

'I've never understood what was so interesting about it,' Will said.

'I've always loved things that weren't what they seemed,' Rosa replied. 'And for a man to deny his own sex, and
corset himself and paint himself, and be something that he isn't because it touches a place in his heart ... that
has a kind of poetry about it, to my mind.' She smiled. 'And I learned a lot from some of those men, about how
to pretend.'

'Pretend to be a woman, you mean?'

Rosa nodded. 'I'm a confection too, you see,' she said, with more than a trace of self-deprecation. 'My name isn't
even Rosa McGee. I heard the name in a street in Newcastle; somebody calling for Rosa, Rosa McGee, and I
thought: that's the name for me. Steep got his name from a sign he saw. A spice importer; that was the original
Steep. Jacob liked the sound of it so he took it. I think he murdered the man later.'

'Murdered him for his name?'

'Perhaps more for the fun of it. He was vicious, when he was young. He thought it was his duty to his sex to be
cruel. Pick up a newspaper, and it's plain what men are like.'

'Not every man kills things for the pleasure of it.'

'Oh, that's not what he learned,' Rosa said, with a look of weary frustration at Will's stupidity. 'I took as much
pleasure in killing as he did. No ... what he learned was to pretend there was purpose in it.'

'How young were you when he was learning? Were you children?'

'Oh no. We were never children. At least not that I remember.'

'So before you chose to be Rosa, who were you?'

'I don't know. We were with Rukenau. I don't think we needed names. We were his instruments.'

'Building the Domus Mundi?' She shook her head. 'So do you not remember being with him?'

'Why should I? Do you remember what you were before you were Will Rabjohns?'

'I remember being a baby, very vaguely. At least I think I do.'

'It may be the same for me, once I get to Tiree.'

The Claymore was now perhaps fifteen yards from the jetty at Coll, and with the ease of one who'd performed
the duty countless times, the skipper brought the vessel alongside. There was a flurry of activity below, as cars
were driven off and passengers disembarked. Will paid little attention. He had more questions to ask of Rosa,
and was determined to voice them all while she was in a voluble mood.

'You said something about Jacob learning to be a man

'Did I?' she said, feigning distraction.

-but he was already a man. You said so.'

'I said he wasn't a child. That's not the same thing. He had to learn the way men are in the world, as I had to
learn the ways of women. None of it came naturally to us. Well ... perhaps some of it. I do remember thinking
one day how I loved to hold babies in my arms, how I loved softness and lullabies. And Steep didn't.'