Sacrament (11 page)

Tbough Frannie wasn't sick, she suffered a good deal more than Will had the day after the night in the
Courthouse. She had managed to smuggle Sherwood and herself into the house and upstairs to clean up before
they were seen by their parents, and had entertained the hope that they were not going to be questioned until,
out of the blue, Sherwood had begun to sob. He'd been thankfully inarticulate about what was causing him to do
so, and though both her mother and her father quizzed her closely she kept her answers vague. She didn't like
lying, mainly because she wasn't very good at it, but she knew that Will would never forgive her if she let any
details of what happened slip. Her father simply grew cold and remote when his first fury was spent, but her
mother was good at attrition. She would work and work at her suspicions, until she had them satisfied. So for an
hour and a half Frannie found herself quizzed as to why Sherwood was in such a state. She said they'd gone out
to play with Will, become lost in the dark, and they'd got frightened. Plainly her mother doubted every word,
but she and her daughter were alike in their tenaciousness. The more Mrs Cunningham repeated her questions,
the more entrenched in her replies Frannie became. At last, her mother grew exasperated.

'I don't want you seeing that Rabjohns boy again,' she said. 'I think he's a troublemaker. He doesn't belong here
and he's a bad influence. I'm surprised at you, Frances. And disappointed. You're usually more responsible than
this. You know how confused your brother can get. And now he's in a terrible state. I've never seen him so bad.
Crying and crying. I blame you.'

This little speech brought the matter to an end for the evening. But sometime before dawn Frannie woke to hear
her brother sobbing pitifully again, and then her mother going into his room, and the sobbing subsiding while
quiet words were exchanged, and then the weeping coming again, while her mother tried - and apparently failed
- to soothe him. Frannie lay in the darkness of her room, fighting back tears of her own. But she lost the battle.
They came, oh they came, salty in her nose, hot beneath her lids and on her cheeks. Tears for Sherwood, whom
she knew was the least equipped to deal with whatever nightmares would come of their encounter at the
Courthouse; tears for herself, for the lies she'd told,

which had put a distance between herself and her mother, whom she loved so much; and tears of a different
kind for Will, who had seemed at first the friend she needed in this stale place, but whom she had, it seemed,
already lost.
At last, the inevitable. She heard the handle of her bedroom door squeak as it was turned and her mother said:
'Frannie? Are you awake?'
She didn't pretend otherwise, but sat up in bed. 'What's wrong?'
'Sher-wood just told me some very strange things.'

He had told everything: about going to the Courthouse in pursuit of Will, about the man in black and the woman
in veils. And more besides. Something about the woman being naked, and a fire. Was any part of this true,
Frannie's mother wanted to know? And if so, why hadn't Frannie told her?
Despite Will's edict, she had no choice but to tell the truth now. Yes, there had been two people at the
Courthouse, just as Sherwood had said. No, she didn't know who they were; no she hadn't seen the woman
undressing, and no, she couldn't be certain she would recognize them again (that part wasn't entirely true, but it
was close enough). It had been dark, she said, and she had been afraid, not just for herself but for all three of
them.
'Did they threaten you?' her mother wanted to know.
'Not exactly.'
'But you said you were afraid.'
'I was. They weren't like anybody I'd ever seen before.'
'So what were they like?'
Words failed her, and failed her again when her father appeared and asked her the same questions.
'How many times have I told you,' he said, 'not to go near anybody you don't know?'
'I was following Will. I was afraid he was going to get hurt.'
'If he had that'd be his business and not yours. He wouldn't do the same for you, I'm damn certain of that.'
'You don't know him. He-'
'Don't answer me back,' her father snapped, 'I'll speak to his parents tomorrow. I want them to know what an
idiot they've got for a son.'
With that he left her to her thoughts.

The events of the night were not over, however. When the house had finally become quiet, Frannie heard a light
tapping on her bedroom door,

and Sherwood sidled in, clutching something to his chest. His voice was cracked with all the crying he'd been
doing.

'I've got something you have to see,' he said, and crossing to the window he pulled back the curtains. There was
a streetlamp outside the front of the house, and it shed its light through the rain-streaked glass onto Sherwood's
pale, puffy face.

'I don't know why I did it,' he began.

'Did what?'

'It was just there, you know, and when I saw it I wanted it.' As he spoke he proffered the object he'd been
clutching. 'It's just an old book,' he said.

'You stole it?' He nodded. 'Where from? The Courthouse?' Again, he nodded. He looked so frightened she was
afraid he was going to start weeping again. 'It's all right,' she said. 'I'm not cross. I'm just surprised. I didn't see
you with it.'

'I put it in my jacket.'

'Where did you find it?'

He told her about the desk, and the inks and the pens, and while he told her she took the book from his hands
and went to the window with it. There was a strange perfume coming off it. She raised it to her nose - not too
close - and inhaled its scent. It smelt like a cold fire, like embers left in the rain, but sharpened by a spice she
knew she would never find on a supermarket shelf. The smell made her think twice about opening the book; but
how could she not, given where it had come from? She put her thumb against the edge of the cover and lifted it.
On the inside page was a single circle, drawn in black or perhaps dark brown ink. No name. No title. Just this
ring, perfectly drawn.

'It's his, isn't it?' she said to Sherwood.

'I think so.'

'Does anyone know you took it?'

'No, I don't think so.'

That at least was something to be grateful for. She turned to the next page. It was as complex as the previous
page had been simple: row upon row upon row of writing, tiny words pressed so close to one another it was
almost a seamless flow. She flipped the page. It was the same again, on left and right. And on the next two
sheets, the same; and on the next two and the next two. She peered at the script more closely, to see if she could
make any sense of it, but the words weren't in English. Stranger still, the letters weren't from the alphabet. They
were pretty, though, tiny elaborate marks that had been set down with obsessive care.

'What does it mean?' Sherwood said, peering over her shoulder.

'I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before.'

'Do you think it's a story?'

'I don't think so. It isn't printed, like a proper book.' She licked her

forefinger and dabbed it on the words. It came away stained. 'It was written by him,' she said.
'By Jacob?' Sherwood breathed.
'Yes.' She flipped over a few more pages and finally came to a picture. It was an insect - a beetle of some
kind, she thought - and like the writing on the preceding pages it had been set down exquisitely, every detail of
its head and legs and iridescent wings so meticulously painted it looked uncannily lifelike in the watery light, as
though it might have risen whirring from the paper had she touched it.
'I know I shouldn't have taken the book,' Sherwood said, 'but now I don't want to give it back, 'cause I don't
want to see him again.'
'You won't have to,' Frannie reassured him.
'You promise?'
'I promise. There's nothing to be afraid of, Sher. We're safe here, with Mum and Dad to look after us.'
Sherwood had put his arm through hers. She could feel his thin body quivering against her own. 'But they
won't be here always, will they?' he said, his voice eerily flat, as though this most terrible of possibilities could
not be expressed unless stripped of all emphasis.
'No,' she said. 'They won't.'
'What will happen to us then?' he said.
'I'll be here to look after you,' Frannie replied.
'You promise?'
'I promise. Now, it's time you were back in bed.'
She took her brother by the hand and they both tiptoed out along the landing to his room. There she settled
him back in his bed, and told him not to think about the book or the Courthouse or what had happened tonight
any more, but to go back to sleep. Her duty done she returned to her own bedroom, closed the door and the
curtains, and put the book in the cupboard under her sweaters. There was no lock on the cupboard door, but if
there had been she would have certainly turned the key. Then she climbed between the now chilly sheets and
put on the bedside light, just in case the beetle in the book came clicking across the floor to find her before
dawn; which possibility, after the evening's escapades, she could not entirely consign to the realm of the
impossible.

i

Will consumed his soup like a dutiful patient, and then, once Adele had taken his temperature, collected his tray
and gone back downstairs, quickly got up and dressed. It was by now early in the evening, and the sleety day .
was already losing its light, but he had no intention of putting his journey off until tomorrow.

The television had been turned on in the living-room - he could hear the calm, even tones of a newscaster, and
then, as his mother changed channels, applause and laughter. He was glad of the sound. It covered the
occasional squeak of a stair as he descended to the hallway. There, as he donned scarf, anorak, gloves and
boots, he came within a breath of discovery, as his father called out from his study demanding to know from
Adele where his tea had got to. Was she picking the leaves herself, for Christ's sake? Adele did not reply, and
his father stormed into the kitchen to get an answer. He did not notice his son in the unlit hallway, however, and
while he whittered on to Adele about how slow she was, Will opened the front door and, slipping through the
narrowest crack he could make so as not to have a draught alert them to his going, was out on his night-journey.

ii

Rosa didn't conceal the satisfaction she felt at the absence of the book. It had burned up in the fire, and that was
all there was to say in the matter. 'So you've lost one of your precious journals,' she said. 'Perhaps you'll be a
little more sympathetic in the future when I get weepy about the children.'

'There's no comparison,' Steep said, still searching the ashes in the antechamber. His desk was little more than
seared timbers, his pens and brushes gone, his box of watercolours barely recognizable, his inks boiled away.
His bag containing the earlier journals had been beyond the scope of the fire, so all was not lost. But the
work-in-progress, his account of the last eighteen years of his vast labour, had gone. And Rosa's attempt to
equate his loss with what she felt when one of her brats had to be put

out of its misery made him sick to his stomach. 'This is the labour of my life,' he pointed out.

'Then it's pitiful,' she said. 'Making books! It's pitiful.' She leaned towards him. 'Who'd you think you're making
them for? Not me. I'm not interested. I'm not remotely interested.'

'You know why I'm making them,' Jacob said sullenly. 'To be a witness. When God comes, and demands we tell
Him what we've wrought, chapter and verse, we must have an account. Every detail. Only then will we be ...
Jesus! Why do I bother explaining it to you?'

'You can say the word. Go on, say it! Say forgiven. That's what you used to say all the time. We'd be forgiven.'
She approached him now. 'But you don't really believe that any more do you?' She gently reached up and put
her hands to his face. 'Be honest, my love,' she said, suddenly soft.

'I still ... I still believe there's purpose in our lives,' Jacob replied. 'I have to believe that.'

'Well I don't,' Rosa said plainly. 'I realized after our fumblfngs of yesterday, I have no healthy desires left in me.
None. At all. There won't be any more children. There won't be any hearth and home. And there won't be a day
of forgiveness, Jacob. That's certain. We're alone, with the power to do whatever we want.' She smiled. 'That
boy

' Will?'

'No. The younger one, Sherwood. I had him at my tithes, sucking away, and I thought: it's a sickness to take
pleasure in this, but Lord, you know that made it all the more pleasurable? And I began to think, when the child
had gone, what else would give me pleasure? What's the worst I could do?'

'And?'

'My mind fairly began to spin at the possibilities,' she said with a smile. 'It really did. If we're not going to be
forgiven, why try to be something I'm not?' She was staring hard into his face. 'Why should I waste my breath
hoping for something we'll never have?'

Jacob pulled his face from her hands. 'You won't tempt me,' he said. 'So stop wasting your time. I have my plans
laid

'The book's burned,' Rosa snapped.

'I'll make another.'

'And if that burns?'

'Another! And another! I'll be the stronger for this loss.'

'Oh, so will I,' Rosa said, her features draining of warmth, so that her beauty seemed, for all its perfection,
almost cadaverous. 'I will be a different woman from now on. I will have pleasure whenever I can take it, by
whatever means amuse me. And if someone or something gets a child upon me I'll fetch it out of m'self with a
sharpened stick.' This notion pleased her. Laughing raucously, she turned her back on Jacob, and spat

into the ashes. 'There's for your book,' she said. She spat again. 'And there's for forgiveness.' Again she spat.
'And there's for God. He'll have nothing more from me.'
She said no more. Without looking to see what effect she'd had upon her companion (she would have been
disappointed; he was stony-faced), she strode out. Only when she'd gone did Jacob let himself weep. Manly
tears; the tears of a commander before a broken army or a father at his son's grave. He didn't simply grieve for
the book - though that added to the sum - but for himself. After this, he would be alone. Rosa - his once beloved
Rosa, with whom he'd shared his most cherished ambitions -would go her hedonistic way, and he would take
his own road, with his knife and his pen and a new journal full of empty pages. Oh, that would be hard after so
many years together, and the work before him still so monumental and the sky so wide.
Then an unbidden thought: why not kill her? There would be satisfaction in that right now, no question about
it. A quick slice across her pulsing throat and down she'd go, like a felled cow. He'd comfort her in her final
moments; tell her how much he had loved her, in his way; how he would dedicate his labours to her until they
were finished. Every nest he rifled, every burrow he purified, he would say: this is for you, my Rosa; and this;
and this, until his hands, bloodied and yolked, had finished with their weary work.
He pulled his knife from his belt, already imagining the sound of its swoop across her neck; the hiss of her
breath from her throat, the fizz of her blood. Then he went after her, back towards the Courtroom.
She was waiting for him; turned to face him with her pet ropes - what she liked to call her rosaries - cavorting
around her arms like vipers. One leapt as he approached her, finding his wrist with the speed of her will, and
catching it so tight he gasped at the sensation.
'How dare you?' she said. A second rope leapt from her hand, and wrapping itself around his neck caught hold
of his knife-hand from behind him. She flicked her eye and it pulled tight, wrenching the blade back towards his
face. 'You would have murdered me.'
'I would have tried.'
'I'm no use to you as a womb, so I may as well be crow-bait, is that it?'
'No. I just ... I wanted to simplify things.'
'That's a fresh excuse,' she said, almost admiringly. 'Which eye is it to be?'
' What?'
'I'm going to puncture one of your eyes, Jacob. With this little knife of yours-'She willed the ropes to tighten.
They creaked a little. 'Which is it to be?'
'If you harm me, it'll be war between us.'

'And war's for men, so I would lose? Is that the inference?'
'You know you would.'
'I don't know a thing about myself, Jacob, any more than you do. I learned it all watching women do as
women do. Perhaps I'd be a very fine soldier. Perhaps we'd have such a war, you and me, that it would be like
love, only bloodier.' She cocked her head. 'Which eye is it to be?'
'Neither,' Jacob said, a tremor in his voice now. 'I need both my eyes, Rosa, to do my work. Put one of them
out and you may as well take my life with it.'
'I want recompense!' she said, through her perfect teeth. 'I want you to suffer for what you just tried to do.'
'Anything but an eye.'
'Anything?'
'Yes.'
'Unbutton yourself.'
'What?'
'You heard me. Unbutton yourself.'
'No, Rosa.'
'I want one of your balls, Jacob. It's that or an eye. Make up your mind.'
'Stop this,' he said softly.
'Am I supposed to melt now?' she replied. 'Get weak with compassion?' She shook her head. 'Unbutton
yourself,' she said.
His free hand went to his groin.
'You can do it yourself, if that'll make you feel any better. Well? Would it?'
He nodded. She let the ropes about his wrist relax a little.
'I won't even watch,' she said. 'How's that? Then if you lose your courage for a bit nobody's going to know but
you.'
The ropes loosed his hand completely now. They returned to Rosa and looped themselves around her neck.
'Go to it.'
'Rosa ... ?'
'Jacob?'
'If I do this-?'
'Yes.'
-you'll never talk about it to anybody?'
'Talk about what?'
'That I'm not ... complete.'
Rosa shrugged. 'Who'd care?' she said.
'Just agree.'
'I agree.' She turned her back on him. 'Make it the left,' she said. 'It hangs a little lower, so it's probably the
riper of the two.'
He stood in the passageway when she'd gone and felt the heft of the

knife in his hand. He had commissioned it in Damascus, a year after the death of Thomas Simeon, and had used
it innumerable times since. Though there had been nothing supernatural about its maker, some authority had
been conferred upon it over the years, for it grew sharper, he thought, with every breath it took. He would be
able to scoop out what the bitch demanded without much trouble; and after all, what did he care? He had no use
for what he now cupped in his palm. Two eggs in a nest of skin; that's all they were. He put the tip of the blade
to his flesh, and drew a deep breath. In the Courtroom, down the passageway, Rosa was singing one of her
wretched lullabies. He waited for a high note, then cut.