Sacrament (12 page)

Will didn't attempt a short cut back to the Courthouse, but took the road down to the village. At the intersection
there was a telephone box, and he thought: I should say goodbye to Frannie. It wasn't so much for friendship's
sake as for the pleasure of the boast. To be able to say: I'm going; just as I said I would; I'm going away forever.

He stepped into the box, fumbled for some change, then fumbled again (his fingers chilled, even through his
gloves) to find the Cunninghams' number in the out-of-date directory. It was there. He dialled, prepared to
disguise his voice if Frannie's father came on the line. Her mother answered, however, and with a hint of
frostiness brought her daughter to the phone. Will got straight to the point: swore Frannie to secrecy then told
her he was leaving.

'With them?' she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

He told her it was none of her business. He was simply going away.

'Well I've got something that belongs to Steep,' she said.

'What?'

'It's none of your business,' she countered.

'All right,' Will said. 'Yes, I'm going with them.' There was no doubt in his feverish head that this was so. 'Now .
. . what have you got?'

'You mustn't say anything. I don't want them coming looking.'

'They won't.'

She paused a moment. Then she said: 'Sherwood found a book. I think it belongs to Steep.'

'Is that all?' he said. A book; who cared about a book? But he supposed she needed some memento of this
adventure, however petty.

'It's not just any book,' she insisted. 'It's-'

But Will had already finished with the conversation. 'I have to go,' he said.

'Wait, Will-'

'I haven't got time. 'Bye, Frannie. Say 'bye to Sherwood, will you?'

He put the receiver down, feeling thoroughly pleased with himself. Then he left the relative comfort of the
telephone box, and set out on the track to Bartholomeus' Courthouse.

The fallen snow had frozen, and formed a glittering skin on the road ahead, upon which a new layer of snow
was being deposited as the storm intensified. Its beauty was his to appreciate, and his alone. The people of
Burnt Yarley were at home tonight, beside their fires, their cattle gathered into sheds end byres, their chickens
fed and locked up in their coops for the night.

The mounting blizzard soon turned the scene ahead of him into a white blur, but he had sufficient wits about
him to watch for the place in the hedge where he'd previously gained access to the field, and, spotting it, dug his
way through. The Courthouse was not visible, of course, but he knew that if he trudged directly across the
meadow he'd reach its steps in due course. It was harder going than the road, and his body, for all his
determination, was showing signs of surrender. His limbs felt jittery, and the urge to sink down in the snow for
a while and rest grew stronger with every step. But he saw the Courthouse now, coming out of the blizzard.
Jubilant, he wiped the snow from his numbed face, so that the blaze in him - in his eyes, in his skin - would be
readily seen. Then he started up the steps. Only when he reached the top did he realize that Jacob was in the
doorway, silhouetted against a fire burning in the vestibule. This was not a piffling blaze like the one Will had
fed: it was a bonfire. And he did not doubt for a moment it had living fuel. He could not see what, exactly, nor
did he much care. It was his idol he wanted to see, and be seen by. More than seen, embraced. But Jacob did not
move, and a terror came upon Will that he'd misunderstood everything; that he was no more wanted here than at
the house he'd left. He stopped one step short of the top, and waited for judgment. It did not come. He was not
even certain Jacob had even seen him.

And then, out of the shadowed face, a soft, raw voice.

'I came out here without even knowing why. Now I see.'

Will dared a syllable. 'Me?'

Jacob nodded. 'I was looking for you,' he said, and opened his arms.

Will would have gone into them happily, but his body was too weak to get him there. As he climbed the final
step he stumbled, his outstretched hands moving too slowly to protect his head from striking the cold stone. He
heard Jacob let out a little shout as he fell, then the sound of the man's boots crunching on the frost as he came
to help.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

Will thought he answered, but he wasn't certain. He felt Steep's arms beneath him, however, lifting him up, and
the warmth of the man's breath on his frozen face. I'm home, he thought; and passed out.

i

Thursday's evening meal in the Cunningham house was in winter a hearty lamb stew, mashed potatoes and
buttered carrots, preceded always by the prayer that the family recited before every meal: 'For what we are
about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.' There was very little talk around the table tonight, but
that was not unusual: George Cunningham was a great believer in things having their proper time and place.
The dinner table was for dining, not for talking. There was only one exchange of any length, which took place
when George, observing Frannie toying with her food, told her sharply to eat up.

'I'm not really hungry,' Frannie replied.

'Are you sickening for something?' he said. 'I wouldn't be surprised after yesterday.'

'George,' his wife said, casting a fretful glance at Sherwood, who was also not showing much of an appetite.

'Well look at the pair of you,' George said, his tone warming. 'You look like a pair of drowned pups, you do.' He
patted his daughter's hand. 'A mistake's a mistake, and you made one, but that's the end of it as far as your Mum
and I are concerned. As long as you learned your lesson. Now you eat up. And give your Dad a smile.' Frannie
tried. 'Is that the best you can do?' her father chuckled. 'Well, you'll brighten up after a good night's sleep. Have
you got a lot of homework?'

'A bit.'

'You go up and do it, then. Your Mum and Sherwood'll take care of the dishes.'

Grateful to be away from the table, Frannie took herself upstairs, fully intending to prepare for the history test
that was looming, but the book before her was as incomprehensible as Jacob's journal, and a good deal less
intriguing. At last she gave up on the life of Anne Boleyn, and guiltily pulled the journal out of its hiding place
to puzzle over it afresh. She had scarcely opened it, however, when she heard the telephone ring and her
mother, having talked for a few moments, called her to the landing. She slid the journal out of sight beneath her
study books and went to the top of the stairs.

'It's Will's father on the phone,' her mother said.

'What does he want?' Frannie said, knowing full well.

'Will's disappeared,' her mother said. 'Do you know where he might have gone?'

Frannie gave herself a few moments to think it over. While she did so she heard the gale bringing snow against
the landing window, and thought of Will out there somewhere, in the freezing cold. She knew exactly where
he'd go, of course, but she'd made a promise to him, and intended to keep it.

'I don't know,' she said.

'He didn't say where he was when he telephoned?' her mother asked.

'No,' she said, without hesitation.

This news was duly communicated to Will's father, and Frannie took herself back to her bedroom. But she
could no longer concentrate on study, legitimate or no. Her thoughts returned over and over again to Will, who
had made her a co-conspirator in his escape plans. If any harm came to him she would be in some measure
responsible; or at least she'd feel that way, which would amount to the same thing. The temptation to confess
what little she knew, and be relieved of its weight, was almost overwhelming. But a promise was a promise.
Will had made his decision: he wanted to be out in the world somewhere, far from here, and wasn't there a part
of her that envied him the ease of his going? She would never have that ease, she knew, as long as Sherwood
was alive. When her parents were old or dead, he would need someone to watch over him, and -just as she had
promised him - that someone would have to be her.

She went to the window and cleared a place on the fogged glass with the heel of her hand. Snow blazed through
the light from the streetlamp, like flakes of white fire, driven by the wind that whined in the telephone wires and
rattled around the eaves. She'd heard her father say fully a month before that the farmers at The Plough were
warning that the winter would be cruel. Tonight was the first proof of their prophecies. Not the cleverest time to
run away, she thought, but the deed was done. Will was out there in the blizzard somewhere. He'd made his
choice. She only hoped the consequences weren't fatal.

ii

In his narrow bed in the narrow room beside Frannie's, Sherwood lay wide awake. It wasn't the storm that kept
sleep from coming. It was pictures of Rosa McGee: bright flickering pictures that made everything he'd ever
seen in his head before look like black and white. Several times tonight it felt as if she was right there in the
room with him, the memory of her was so overpowering. He could see her clearly, her titties shiny-wet with his
spit. And though she'd scared him at the end, raising her skirt

that way, it was that moment he replayed more often than any other, hoping each time to extend her motion by a
few seconds, so that this time the dress would rise up to her bellybutton and he would get to see what she'd been
wanting to show him. He had several impressions of what it was: a kind of lop-sided mouth; a patch of hair
(perhaps greenish, like a little bush), a simple round hole. Whatever form it took, however, it was wet; of that he
was certain, and sometimes he thought he saw drops of that wetness running down the insides of her thighs.

He could never tell anybody about these memories, of course. He wouldn't be able to boast about what had
happened with Rosa once he was back amongst his schoolmates; and he certainly wouldn't talk about it in adult
company. People already treated him as strange. When he went out shopping with his Mum, they'd peer at him,
pretending they weren't, and talk about him in lowered voices. But he heard. They said he was odd, they said he
was a little wrong in the head; they said he was a cross to bear and it was good his Mum was a Christian
woman. He heard it all. So these rememberings had to stay hidden away, where people couldn't see them, or
else there'd be more whispers, more shaken heads.

He didn't mind. In fact he liked the idea of keeping Rosa locked up in his brain, where only he could go and
look at her. Perhaps he would find a way to talk to her, as time went by, persuade her to lift her skirts a little
higher, a little higher, until he could see her secret place.

In the meantime he worked his belly and hips against the weight of the sheet and blankets, pressing his hand
hard against his mouth as though his palms were her breasts and he was back licking them; and though he had
cried himself dry in the last little while, all his tears were forgotten in the thrill of the memory, and the strange
hotness in his groin.

Rosa, he murmured against his hand; Rosa, Rosa, Rosa ...

By the time Will opened his eyes the fire, which had been in its heyday when he arrived, was now in its embery
dotage. But Jacob had laid his guest close to it, and there was still sufficient heat in its dwindling flame to drive
the last of the chill from Will's bones. He sat up, and realized he was wrapped in Jacob's military coat, and
naked beneath.

'That was brave,' somebody on the other side of the fire said.

Will squinted to see the speaker better. It was Jacob, of course. He was lounging against the wall, staring
through the flames at Will. He looked a little sick himself, Will thought, as though in sympathy with his own
condition; but whereas Will's illness had left him worn and weak, Steep glittered in his hurt: pale, gleaming
skin, shiny curls pasted to the thick muscle of his neck. His coarse grey shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, his
chest arrayed with a fan of dark hair which ran over the ridges of his belly to his belt. When he smiled, as he did
now, his eyes and teeth glistened, as though made of the same implacable stuff.

'You're sick, and yet you found your way through this blizzard. That shows courage.'

'I'm not sick,' Will insisted. 'I mean ... I was a little, but I feel fine now...'

'You look fine.'

'I am. I'm ready to go any time you want to.'

'Go where?'

'Wherever you want,' Will said. 'I don't care. I'm not afraid of the cold.'

'Oh this isn't cold,' Jacob said. 'Not like some winters we've endured, the bitch and me.' He glanced back
towards the Courtroom, and through the smoke will thought he saw a contemptuous look cross Jacob's face. A
heartbeat later, his gaze came Will's way once more, and there was a new intensity in it. 'I think maybe you
were sent to me, Will, by some kind god or other, to be my companion. You see, I won't be travelling with Mrs
McGee after tonight. We've decided to part company.'

'Have you ... travelled with her for long?'

Jacob leaned forward from his squatting position and picking up a stick, poked at the fire. There was still fuel
concealed in the embers, and it

caught as he raked them over. 'More than I care to remember,' he said.
'So why are you stopping now?'
By the light of the spluttering flames (whatever had been cremated here, it had been fatty) Will saw Jacob
grimace. 'Because I hate her,' he replied. 'And she hates me. I would have killed her tonight, if I'd been quicker.
And then we'd have had us a fire, wouldn't we? We could have warmed half of Yorkshire.'
'Would you really have killed her?'
Jacob raised his left hand into the light. It was gummy with something that looked like blood, but mixed with
flakes of silvery paint. 'This is mine,' he said. 'Shed because I failed to shed hers.' His voice dropped to a
murmur. 'Yes. I would have killed her. But I would have regretted it, I think. She and I are intertwined in some
fashion I've never understood. If I'd done harm to her...'
'You'd have hurt yourself?' Will ventured.
'You understand this?' he said, almost puzzled. Then, more quietly: 'Lord, what have I found?'
'I had a brother,' Will replied, by way of explanation. 'When he died I was happy about it. Well, not happy.
That sounds horrible-'
'If you were happy, say so,' Jacob replied.
'Well I was,' Will said. 'I was glad he was dead. But since he died I'm different. It's the same with you and Mrs
McGee in a way, isn't it? If she'd died you'd be different. And maybe you wouldn't be the way you wanted to
be.'
'I don't know either,' Jacob replied softly. 'How old was your brother?'
'Fifteen and a half.'
'And you didn't love him?' Will shook his head. 'Well that's plain enough,' Jacob said.
'Do you have any brothers?' Will asked him. Now it was Jacob who shook his head. 'What about sisters?'
'None,' he said. 'Or if I did, I don't remember them, which is possible.'
'Having brothers and sisters and not remembering?'
'Having a childhood. Having parents. Being born.'
'I don't remember being born,' Will said.
'Oh you do,' Jacob said. 'Deep, deep inside-' he tapped his breastbone -there's memory in there somewhere, if
you knew how to find it.'
'Maybe it's in you too,' Will said.
'I've looked,' Jacob said. 'Looked as deep as I dare. Sometimes I think I get a taste of it. A moment of
epiphany, then it's gone.'
'What's an epiphany?' Will asked.
Jacob smiled, happy to be a teacher. 'A little piece of bliss,' he said. 'A moment when for no reason you seem
to understand everything, or know that it's there for the understanding.'
'I don't think I've ever had one of those.'

'You wouldn't necessarily remember if you had. They're hard to hold on to. When you do, it's sometimes worse
than forgetting them completely.'

'Why?'

'Because they taunt you. They remind you there's something worth listening for, watching for.'

'So tell me one,' Will said. 'Tell me an epiphany.'

Jacob grinned. 'There's an order.'

'I didn't mean-'

'Don't tell me you didn't mean it if you did,' Jacob said.

'I did,' Will said, beginning to see a pattern in what Jacob asked of him. 'I want you to tell me an epiphany.'

Jacob poked the fire one last time, and then leaned back against the wall.

'Remember how I said I'd endured colder winters than this?'

Will nodded.

'There was one worse than any other. The winter of seventeen thirtynine. Mrs McGee and I were in Russia-'

'Seventeen thirty-nine?'

'No questions,' Jacob said. 'Or you'll have nothing more. It was the bitterest cold I've ever known. Birds froze in
flight and fell out of the air like stones. People perished in their millions and lay in stacks unburied because the
earth was too hard to be dug. You can't imagine ... well, perhaps you can.' He gave Will a curious little smile.
'Can you see it in your mind's eye?'

Will nodded. 'So far,' he said.

'Good. Well now. I was in St Petersburg, with Mrs McGee in tow. She had not wanted to come, as I recall, but
there was a learned doctor there by the name of Khrouslov who had theorized that this lethal cold was the
beginning of an age of ice; that acre by acre, soul by soul, species by species, it would grasp the earth'Jacob
closed his stained hand into a fist as he spoke, until the knuckles blazed white. 'Until there was nothing left
alive.' Now he opened his hand, and lightly blew the silvery dust of dried blood off his palm into the dying fire.
'Plainly, I needed to hear what the man had to say. Unfortunately by the time I arrived he was dead.'

'Of the cold?'

'Of the cold,' Jacob replied, indulging the question despite his edict. 'I would have left the city there and then,'
he went on, 'but Mrs McGee wanted to stay. The Empress Anna, having recently executed a number of
well-loved men, had commanded an ice-palace be built as a distraction for her disgruntled subjects. Now if
there's one thing Mrs McGee loves it's artifice. Silk flowers, wax fruit, china cats. And this palace was to be the
greatest piece of fakery ice and man could create. The architect was

a fellow called Eropkin. I got to know him briefly. The Empress had him executed as a traitor the following
summer: it wasn't the last winter of the world, you see, except for him. But for the months his palace stood,
there on the riverbank between the Admiralty and the Winter Palace, he was the most admired, the most
lionized, the most adored man in St Petersburg.'

'Why?' Will said.

'Because he'd made a masterpiece, Will. I don't suppose you've ever seen an icepalace? No. But you understand
the principle. Blocks of ice were cut from the river, which was solid enough to march an army over, then
carved, and assembled, just the way you'd build an ordinary palace.

'Except ... Eropkin had genius in him that winter. It was as though his whole career had been leading up to this
triumph. He'd only let the masons use the finest, clearest ice, blue and white. He had ice-trees carved for the
gardens around the palace, with ice-birds in their branches and ice-wolves lurking between. There were
ice-dolphins flanking the front doors, that seemed to be leaping from spumy waves, and dogs playing on the
step. There was a bitch, I remember, lying casually at the threshold, suckling her pups. And inside-'

'You could go inside?' Will said, astonished.

'Oh certainly. There was a ballroom, with chandeliers. There was a receiving room with a vast fireplace and an
ice-fire burning in the grate. There was a bedroom, with a stupendous four-poster bed. And of course people
came in their tens of thousands to see the place. It was better by night than by day I think, because at night they
lit thousands of lanterns and bonfires around it, and the walls were translucent, so it was possible to see layer
upon layer of the place-'

'As if you had X-ray eyes.'

'Exactly so.'

'Is that when you had your moment of ... of...'

'Epiphany? No. That comes later.'

'So what happened to the palace?'

'What do you think?'

'It just melted.'

Jacob nodded. 'I went back to St Petersburg in the late spring, because I'd heard the papers of the learned Dr
Khrouslov had been discovered. They had, but his wife had burned them, mistaking them for love-letters to his
mistress. Anyway, it was by then early May, and every trace of the palace had gone.

'And I went down to the Neva - to smoke a cigarette, or take a piss; something inconsequential - and while I was
looking down into the river something seized hold of my - I want to say my soul, if I have one - and I thought of
all those wonders, the wolves and dolphins and spires and

chandeliers and birds and trees, there, somehow waiting in the water. Being in the water already, if I just knew
how to see them-' he wasn't looking at Will any longer, but staring into what remained of the fire, his eyes huge.
'Ready to spring into life. And I thought, if I throw myself in, and drown in the river, and dissolve in the river,
then next year when the river freezes, if the Empress Anna commands another palace to be built I'll be in every
part of it. Jacob in the bird. Jacob in the tree. Jacob in the wolf.'
'But none of it'd be alive.'
Jacob smiled. 'That was the glory of it, Will. Not to be alive. That was the perfection. I stood there on the
river-bank and the joy in me, oh, Will, the sheer ... sheer ... brimming bliss of it. I mean God could not have
been happier at that moment. And that, to answer your question, was my Russian epiphany.' His voice trailed
away, in deference to the memory, leaving only the soft popping of the dying fire. Will was content with the
hush; he needed time to mull over all he'd just been told. Jacob's story had put so many images into his head. Of
carved ice-birds sitting on carved ice-perches, more alive than the frozen flocks that had dropped out of the sky.
Of the people - Empress Anna's complaining subjects -so astonished by the spires and the lights that they forgot
the deaths of great men. And of the river the following spring, with Jacob sitting on its banks, staring into the
rushing waters and seeing bliss.
If somebody had asked him what all this meant, he wouldn't have had any answers. But nor would he have
cared. Jacob had filled up some empty place in him with these pictures and he was grateful for the gift.
At last, Jacob roused himself from his reverie and giving the fire one last, desultory poke said:
'There's something I need you to do for me.'
'Whatever you want.'
'How strong are you feeling?'
'I'm fine.'
'Can you stand?'
'Of course,' Will proceeded to do so, lifting the coat up with him. It was heavier and more cumbersome than
he'd imagined, however, and as he rose it slipped off him. He didn't bother to pick it up. There was scarcely any
light for Jacob to see him naked by. And even if he did, hadn't he taken Will's clothes off, hours before, and laid
him down beside the fire? They had no secrets, he and Jacob.
'I feel fine,' Will pronounced, as he shook the numbness from his legs.
'Here-'Jacob said. He pointed to Will's clothes which had been laid out to dry on the far side of the fire. 'Get
dressed. We have a hard climb ahead of us.'
'What about Mrs McGee?'

'She has no business with us tonight,' Jacob replied. 'Or indeed, after our deeds on the hill, any night.' 'Why not?'
said Will. 'Because I won't need her for company, will I? I'll have you.'