Sacrament (45 page)

Rosa said: 'Stop the car.'

Frannie did as she was instructed.

'What is it?' Will asked, turning round to look at Rosa.

Her eyes were welling with tears as he watched, while a smile befitting a painted Virgin rose on her lips. She
reached out and fumbled with the door-handle, but in her present distracted state she couldn't get it open. Will
was out of the car in a heartbeat, and opening the door for her. They were on an empty stretch of road, with
unfenced pasture off to the right, grazed by a few sheep, and to their left a band of flower-studded grass which
became a gently sloping beach. Overhead, terns wheeled and darted. And much, much higher, a jet on its way
west, reflecting earthlight off its silver underbelly. He saw all this in a moment or two, his senses quickened by
something in the air. The fox moved in him, turning its snout to the sky and sensing whatever Rosa had sensed.

He didn't ask her what it was. He simply waited while she scanned the horizon. Finally she said: 'Rukenau's
here.'

'Alive?'

'Oh yes, alive. Oh my Lord, alive.' Her smile darkened. 'But I wonder what he's become after all these years.'

'Do you know where we can find him?'

She held her breath for a moment. Frannie had got out of the car by now, and started to speak. Will put his
finger to his lips. Rosa, meanwhile, had started to walk away from the car, into the pasture. There was so much
sky here; a vast, empty blue, widening before Will as his eyes grew ambitious to take it in. What have I been
doing all these years, he thought; putting boxes around little corners of the world? It was such a lie to do that; to
stand under skies as wide as this and record instead some mote of suffering. Enough of that.

'What's wrong?' he heard Frannie say.

'Nothing,' he said. 'Why?' Before she could reply he realized that like Rosa, his eyes had filled with tears. That
he was smiling and weeping in the same strange moment. 'It's okay,' he said.

'Are you all right?'

'Never better,' he said, brushing his tears away.

Rosa had finished her contemplations, it seemed, for now she turned round and walked back towards the car. As
she approached she pointed off towards the southwest of the island.

'It's waiting for us,' she said.

With the map in front of him and Rosa, like a living compass, on the seat behind him, it quickly became
apparent to Will where they were headed. To Ceann a' Bharra, or Kenavara, a headland at the southwestern tip
of the island, described in the over-wrought language of the guidebook as 'a precipice that rises out of the ocean
sheer on either flank, and sheerer still at the headland itself, from the heights of which the Skerryvore
Lighthouse may be spied, marking the last sign of a human presence before the mighty Atlantic rolls away to the
empty horizon'. It was, the booklet warned, 'the only spot on our glorious island which has been a scene of
tragedy. The great profusion of birdlife on Kenavara's crags and ledges has drawn the attention of
ornithologists for many years, but regrettably the crags are dangerous to even the most expert of climbers, and
a number of visitors have been killed in falls from the cliffs while attempting to reach inaccessible nests. The
beauty of Kenavara's best appreciated from the safety of the beaches that flank it. Venturing on the headland
itself, even in broad daylight and fine weather, carries with it risk of serious injury or worse...'

It certainly wasn't the easiest of places to reach. The road carried them through a tiny cluster of houses, maybe
ten in all, which were marked on the map as the village of Barrapol, and then on down towards the western
shore of the island, where it divided, about a quarter of a mile short of the beach, the good road making a right
turn towards Sundaig, while the lefthand fork became a track over the bumpy grass. According to the map even
this disappeared after a few hundred yards, but they took it as far as they could, as it ran parallel to the shore.
Their destination was less than half a mile ahead: an undulating peninsula, its flanks scored and gullied, so that
it looked not to be one continuous spot of land, but three or four hillocks, with fissures of naked rock between,
falling away into the sea.

The track had now petered out altogether, but Frannie drove on towards the headland, cautiously negotiating the
increasingly uneven turf. Hares bounded ahead of the car, making preposterous leaps in their alarm; a sheep,
grazing on the machair far from the flock, dashed away, bug-eyed with panic.

The ground was getting progressively sandier, the wheels turning up fans of earth behind the car.

'I don't think we're going to be able to drive much further,' Frannie said.

'Then we'll go by foot,' Will said. 'Are you all right with that, Rosa?'

She murmured that yes, she'd be fine, but once she got out of the car it was clear that her physical state had
deteriorated in the last quarter of an hour. Her skin had lost all its gleam, the whites of her eyes become faintly
jaundiced. Her hands were trembling.

'Are you sick?' Will said.

'I'll get over it,' she said. 'It's just ... coming here again ...' She let her gaze stray towards Kenavara;
reluctantly, Will thought. The bright, smiling woman who'd strode back towards the car on the Crossapol road
had been cowed; he didn't exactly know why. Nor was Rosa going to tell him. Despite her sudden frailty she set
off towards the cliffs, striding ahead of Will and Frannie.

'Let her lead,' Will whispered.

So they wove their way through the machair towards Kenavara, the reason for the headland's fatal reputation
becoming more apparent as they approached. The waves were beating hard against the shore to their right, but
their violence was nothing compared to the fury with which they came against the cliffs. And rising out of the
spume as though born from the waves and given wings, tens of hundreds of birds, their din a raucous
counterpoint to the boom of the water.

Not all of them claimed the cliffs as their home. A solitary tern approached overhead, sniping in a bitter voice at
these intruders, and when they didn't retreat swooped down as though to peck at them, veering off a few inches
short of their scalps. Frannie sniped back, waving her arms to shoo the tern away.

'Bloody bird!' she yelled up at it. 'Leave us alone!'

'It's just protecting its territory,' Will said.

'Well I'm protecting my scalp,' Frannie snapped. 'Go on! Bugger off! Damn thing!'

It continued its attacks for another five minutes, until they were almost at the slope of the headland itself. Rosa
was still leading the way, not even glancing behind to confirm that Will and Frannie were still following.

'I wonder where she's going,' Frannie said.

There was no sign of any human presence on the headland whatsoever; not a fence, not a cairn; not even a sign
to warn people from straying where they could come to harm. And yet Will didn't doubt that this was Rukenau's
home (and, most likely, Thomas Simeon's resting place). He didn't need Rosa to confirm it; he could feel it in
his own body. His skin was tingling, his teeth and tongue and eyeballs ached, his blood thumped in his ears, its
rhythms audible through the din of sea and birds.

Now that they'd emerged from the protective troughs of the machair the wind came at them off the ocean, gusting so strongly that all three were staggering, heads down.

'You want to hang on to me?' Will yelled to Frannie over the bluster. She shook her head. 'Just be careful,' he
shouted. 'The ground's not very safe.'

That was an understatement. The whole headland was a mass of traps, the lush, springy turf suddenly dropping
away, sheer, into a darkness filled with the booming of the sea. The grass itself was slick with the mist that rose
from these gullies, squeaking beneath their heels as they went in pursuit of Rosa. She seemed to move more
sure-footedly than her companions, for all her frailty, the gap between the two parties steadily widening as they
proceeded. On more than one occasion Will and Frannie lost sight of her altogether, when the route brought
either they or she to a dip in the ground. The sides of some were extremely steep, and Frannie preferred to
negotiate them on her backside, clinging to fistfuls of slippery grass for purchase. All the while, the birds
wheeled overhead. Gulls and guillemots, fulmars, petrels and kittiwakes, even a hoodie-crow, up to see what the
hoopla was all about. None of them made any attempt to attack, as the tern had done. This was so assuredly
their terrain, what did they have to fear? These pitiful people clinging whiteknuckled to rock and clod were no
threat to their sovereignty.

At last Frannie caught hold of Will's arms, and pulling him close enough that she could be heard over the din of
the birds, said: 'Where the hell's Rosa gone? We haven't lost her, have we?'

Will scanned the land ahead. There was indeed no sign of Rosa. They were no more than five hundred yards
from the end of the headland, but there were still dozens of places she could have disappeared: spots where the
ground sloped away into marshy hollows; rocky outcrops marking fissures and crevices.

'Stay here a moment,' Will said to Frannie, and retraced their steps to the highest vantage point in the vicinity: a
lichen-covered boulder fully ten feet high. He proceeded to scale it. He was no great climber at the best of
times, he was too gangly; and by now a succession of sleepdeprived nights was taking its toll on both his
strength and his coordination. In short, it was a laborious attempt, and by the time he reached the top he was
panting and sweaty. He studied the vista before him as logically as his giddy head would allow, looking for
some sign of Rosa, but could see none, and was about to scramble down again when he caught sight of
something pale, half-hidden in the dark rocks a hundred yards ahead.

'I see her!' he yelled to Frannie, and slithering down from his perch with even less dignity than he'd had
climbing it, led Frannie to the place. His eyes had not been playing tricks. Rosa was lying on the ground, her
face completely ashen, her teeth chattering. The yellowish colour in her eyes had become almost golden. When she raised her eyes to him her gaze was no longer entirely human, and some profound repugnance in him - an animal fear of something that was not natural - kept him from coming too close to her.

'What happened?' he said.

'I slipped, is all,' she said. Was her voice subtly changed too? He thought so. Or was it the fact that she seemed
to be speaking close to his ear, in a whisper, when she was lying three yards away? 'Get me up,' she demanded.

'Is he here?' Will said.

7s who here?'

'Rukenau.'

'Just yet me up.'

'I want an answer first,' Will said.

'It's none of your business,' Rosa replied.

'Look. You wouldn't even be here- Will began.

She gave him a look that, had she not so plainly been in a severely weakened state, would have shaken him to
his core; a salutary reminder that though he'd seen half a dozen Rosa McGees in the last two days, some of them
almost gentle, they were all fabrications. The true thing she was - the thing with aureate gaze and a voice that
spoke in the bones of his head - that thing didn't care how it had come here or what civilities it might owe those
who'd brought it. All it wanted now was to be in the House of the World, and it was too weak to waste its time
with a show of courtesy.

'Get me up,' she said again, reaching out towards Will.

He didn't move to help her. He simply studied her face, waiting for her impatience to betray her. And so it did.
She could not help but look past him to the place she wanted to be, demanding again to be helped up.

Will followed the line of her gaze, past the rocks that lay between them and the sward at the crown of the cliffs,
to a spot that seemed from this distance quite unremarkable: just a patch of marshy ground. She caught his trick
instantly, and began to harangue him afresh.

'You don't dare go there without me!'

'Don't I?' he said.

She turned her fury on Frannie. 'Tell him, woman! He dare not enter that House without me!'

'Maybe you should stay with her?' Will said to Frannie. She put up no argument. By the expression on her face
it was apparent the atmosphere of the place had unsettled her deeply. 'I promise I won't step inside without you.'

'You'd better not,' Frannie said.

'If she tries anything tricky, yell.'

'Oh you'll hear me, don't worry,' Frannie said.
Will glanced back at Rosa. She'd given up her protests now, and was lying back against the rock, staring up at
the sky. It seemed her eyes were mirrors at that moment, waves of sun and shadow moving over them. He
looked away, distressed, and said to Frannie: 'Don't go near her.' Then he was off, towards the place between the
rocks.

He was happy not to be following in Rosa's footsteps, and happy to be alone. No, never alone. The fox was with
him as he went, like a second self. It was more agile than he, and several times he felt its energies urging him to
walk where his lumpen body didn't dare go. It was also more cautious. His eyes darted about looking for signs
of threat; his nose was uncommonly sensitive to the scents in the wind. But there was no evidence of danger.
Nor, though he was now fifteen yards from the rocks, was there any sign of a house, or the ruins of a house.

He glanced back towards Frannie and Rosa but the ground had dipped so steeply he could no longer see them.
To his right, no more than a yard from his uncertain feet, the ground fell away into a cleft of black rock a little
wider than a man's body. One slip, he knew, and he was gone. And wouldn't that be a pitiful end for a journey
that had taken so many years and covered so many miles, from a hill and a runaway hare, from a flame and a
handful of moths, from the wastes of Balthazar and a bloody bear, coming to take him in her arms? A few more
yards, a few more seconds, and he'd be there at the doorstep, and that journey would be ended. There'd be
understanding, there'd be revelation, there'd be an end to the ache in him.

Ahead of him was a patch of bright green turf, sparkling with moisture and starred with yellow vetch. Beyond
it, a small rocky outcrop, which the birds apparently used to crack their catch upon, because it was littered with
broken crab shells and spattered with white shit. Beyond that, the boulders between which Rosa had been
staring so intently.

It wasn't a particularly tricky manoeuvre to get from where he stood to his destination; but he took his time, his
body trembling with a mixture of fatigue and exhilaration. He crossed the patch of grass without incident,
though it was as slick as ice beneath his boots, then he proceeded to clamber up the outcrop, the gully at his
back. The first couple of handholds were simple enough, but the higher he climbed the more his body's betrayal
escalated. His eyes began to flicker wildly, turning the rock in front of him to a blur. His hands and feet had
become numb. There was a good deal more than exhaustion at work, he realized. His body was responding to an
outside influence; some energy in the air or earth that was tempting his system to treason. The blurring of his sight was sickening; he felt nausea rising in him. To ward it off he closed his eyes, tight, trusting to what little feeling he had left in his hands to guide him up the rest of the way. It was a dangerous business given that the gully was right behind him to swallow him if he fell, but the risk paid off. Three more handholds and he was up onto the top of the rock, brushing shards of crab shells off his palms.

He opened his eyes. Their motion had quieted a little in the murk behind his lids, but as soon as the light hit
them they began to spasm again. He reached out to grab hold of the boulders on either side of him, focusing as
best he could on the patch of green that lay between them. Then, keeping his numbed hands pressed against the
stones, he started to fumble his way into the windless passage.

It was not just his sight and sense of touch that had gone awry. His ears had joined the rebellion. The chorus
of wheeling birds and the boom of surf had decayed into a general noise that sloshed around in his skull like
mud. All he could hear with any clarity was his own raw breath, drawn and delivered. He would not be able to
get much further in this state, he knew. Another three, four steps and his dead legs would fold up under him, or
something in his head would snap. The House had put up its defences, and they were successfully repelling him.
He forced his barely functioning limbs to take another step, clinging to the boulders as best he could to keep
from trusting his full weight to his legs. How far was he from the grassy space that had once been his
destination? He no longer knew. It was academic anyway. He would never make it. And yet, the idiot ghost of
that ambition remained, haunting his failing sinews.

Maybe another step, another two steps, just to see if he could make it to the open space.

'Come on ...' he muttered to himself, the syllables as raw as his breath. 'Move...'
His growls worked. His reluctant legs carried him another step, and another after that. Suddenly the wind was
on his face again. He had reached the end of the passage, and was out into the open air.

Having no other choice, he let go of the boulders, and sank down to his knees. The ground was sodden beneath
him; cold water spattered up against his groin and belly. He teetered for a few minutes and then pitched forward
onto his hands. The scene was an incoherent blur before him: a haze of green for the earth, a haze of grey above
it for the sky. He was about to close his eyes against the sight when he glimpsed in the middle of this muddied
field of vision a sliver of clarity. It was thin, but sharp, as though his eyes, for all their cavorting, had here
resolved their confusions. He could see every blade of grass in crystalline detail; and the sun-gilded fringes of
the clouds, as they slid past the aperture.

It's open, he thought. The door's open, just a fraction, and I'm looking through it; peering into the House the
Nilotic built. His legs would not carry him to the place, but he'd damn well get there on his hands and knees. As
he started to crawl he remembered the solemn promise he'd made to Frannie, and felt a spasm of guilt that he
was breaking it. But he wasn't so mortified that it slowed his crawl. He wanted to be there more than anything
right now. More than promises, certainly. More than life probably, and sanity, too.
Keeping his eye fixed on the sliver of the open door he crawled through the muck to the place where it stood,
and forsaking all he hoped, believed and understood, entered the House of the World.