Sacrament (41 page)

Frannie didn't want to leave. Not with Sherwood lying there on the dusty ground, glassy-eyed. She wanted to
close his lids, and put him somewhere comfortable; at very least cover him up. But she knew in her gut Rosa
was right: she had no place in what was unfolding down the hall. Will had already made it plain to her how
private his business with Steep was; even if it was fatal business. Reluctantly, she allowed Rosa to take her arm
and coax her to the back door and out into the lush green.

Of course the bees were still droning in the overgrown flower beds. Of course the blackbirds were still raising a
sweet chorus in the sycamore. And of course nothing was as it had been three minutes before, nor could ever be
again.

It was very simple. Sherwood, poor Sherwood, was dead, sprawled there on the floor, and his murderer was
standing here right in front of Will, and there was a knife in Will's hand, trembling to be put to its purpose. It
didn't care that Steep had once been its owner; it only wanted to be used. Now; quickly! Never mind that the
flesh it would be butchering belonged to the man who'd treated it like a holy relic. All that mattered was to glint
and glitter in the deed; to rise and fall and rise again red.

'Have you come to give that back to me?' Steep said.

Will could barely fumble a reply, his mind was so filled with the knife's advertisements for its skills. How it
would lop off Steep's ears and nose; reduce his beauty to a wound. He sees you still? Scoop out his eyes! His
screams distress you? Cut out his tongue!

They were terrible thoughts; sickening thoughts. Will didn't want them. But they kept coming.

Steep on his back now, naked. And the knife opening his chest - one, two - exposing his beating heart. You
want his nipples for souvenirs? Here! Something more intimate perhaps? Meat for the fox

And before Will knew what he was doing, his hand was up, the knife exalting. It would have opened Steep's
face to the bone a moment later had Steep not reached up and caught the blade in his fist. Oh it stung him; even
him. His perfect lips curled in pain, and a hiss came between his perfect teeth; a soft hiss that died into a sigh, as
he expelled every vestige of air.

Will attempted to pull the knife out of his grip. Surely it would slice the sheath of Steep's palm, and free itself;
its edges were too keen to be contained. But it didn't move. He tugged again, harder. Still it didn't move. And
again he pulled; but still Steep held it fast.

Will's eyes flickered from the knife to his enemy's face. Steep had not drawn breath since he'd exhaled his sigh;
he was staring at Will, his mouth open a little way, as though he were about to speak.

Then, of course, he inhaled. It was no common breath; no simple summoning of air. It was Steep's reprise of
what had happened on the hill, thirty years before, except that this time he was the one commanding the
moment, unknitting the world around them. It flickered out on theinstant, the floor seeming to fall away beneath their feet, so that Will and Steep seemed to hang above a velvet
immensity, connected only by the blade.

'I want you to share this with me,' Steep said softly, as though he had found a fine wine and was inviting Will to
drink from the same cup. The darkness was solidifying beneath their feet: a roiling dust, ebbing, and flowing.
But all around them otherwise, darkness. And above, darkness. No clouds; nor stars, nor moon.

'Where are we?' Will breathed, looking back at Steep. Jacob's face was not as solid as it had been. The once
smooth skin of his brow and cheek had become grainy, and the murk behind him seemed to be leaking through
his eye. 'Can you hear me?' Will wanted to know. But the face before him continued to lose coherence. And
now, though Will knew this was just a vision, panic began to grow in him. Suppose Steep deserted him here, in
this emptiness?

'Stay...' he found himself saying, like a child afraid to be left alone in the dark. 'Please stay ...

'What are you frightened of?' Steep said. The darkness had almost claimed his face entirely. 'You can tell me.'

'I don't want to get lost,' Will replied.

'There's no help for that,' Steep said. 'Not unless we know our way to God. And that's hard in this confusion.
This sickening confusion.' Though his image had almost disappeared completely now, his voice remained, soft
and solicitous. 'Listen to that din ...'

'Don't go.'

'Listen,' Steep told him.

Will could hear the noise Steep was referring to. It wasn't a single sound, it was a thousand, a thousand
thousand, coming at him from every direction at once. It wasn't strident, nor was it sweet or musical. It was
simply insistent. And its source? That was coming too, from all directions. Tidal multitudes of pale,
indistinguishable forms, crawling towards him. No, not crawling: being born. Creatures spreading their limbs
and purging themselves of infants that, even in the moment of their birth, were ungluing their legs to be
fertilized; and before their partners had rolled off them were spreading their limbs to expel another generation.
And on; and on; in sickening multitudes, their mingled mewlings and sighings and sobs the din that Steep had
said drowned out God.

It wasn't hard for Will to fathom what he was witnessing. This was what Steep saw when he looked at living
things. Not their beauty, not their particularity, just their smothering, deafening fecundity. Flesh begetting flesh,
din begetting din. It wasn't hard to fathom, because he'd thought it himself, in his darkest times. Seen the human
tide advancing on species he'd loved -beasts too wild or too wise to compromise with the invader - and wished
for a plague to wither every human womb

Heard the din and longed for a gentle death to silence every throat. Sometimes not even gentle. He understood.
Oh Lord, he understood.

'Are you still there?' he said to Steep.

'Still here...' the man replied.

'Make it go away.'

'That's what I've been trying to do all these years,' Steep replied.

The rising tide of life was almost upon them, forms being born and being born, spilling around Will's feet.

'Enough,' Will said.

'You understand my point of view?'

'Yes...'

'Louder.'

'Yes! I understand. Perfectly.'

The admission was enough to banish the horror. The tide retreated, and a moment later was gone entirely,
leaving Will hanging in the darkness again.

'Isn't this a finer place?' Steep said. 'In a hush like this we might have a hope of knowing who we are. There's no
error here. No imperfection. Nothing to distract us from God.'

'This is the way you want the world?' Will murmured. 'Empty?'

'Not empty. Cleansed.'

'Ready to begin again?'

'Oh no.'

'But it will, Steep. You might drive things into hiding for a while, but there'll always be some mudfiat you
missed, some rock you didn't lift. And life will come back. Maybe not human life. Maybe something better. But
life, Jacob. You can't kill the world.'

'I'll reduce it to a petal,' Jacob replied, lightly. Will could hear the smile in the man's voice as he spoke. 'And
God'll be there. Plain. I'll see Him, plain. And I'll understand why I was made.' His face was starting to congeal
again. There was the wide, pale brow, sheltering that deep, troubled gaze; the fine nose, the finer mouth.

'Suppose you're wrong,' Will said. 'Suppose God wanted the world to be filled? Ten thousand kinds of
buttercup? A million kinds of beetle? No two of anything alike. Just suppose. Suppose you're the enemy of God,
Jacob. Suppose ... you're the Devil and you don't know it?'

'I'd know. Though I can't see Him yet, God moves in me.'

'Well,' said Will, 'He moves in me too.' And the words, though he'd never thought he'd hear them from his own
tongue, were true. God was in him now. Always had been. Steep had the rage of some Judgmental Father in his
eye, but the divinity Will had in him was no less a Lord, though He talked through the mouth of a fox and loved
life more than Will had supposed life could be loved. A Lord who'd come before him in innumerable shapes
over the years. Some pitiful, to be sure, triumphant. A blind polar bear on a rubbish heap; two children in painted masks; Patrick sleeping, Patrick smiling, Patrick speaking love. Camellias on a window-sill and the skies of Africa. His Lord was there, everywhere, inviting him to see the soul of things.

Sensing the certainty moving in Will, Steep countered in the only way he knew how.

'I put the hunger for death in you,' he said. 'That makes you mine. We might both regret it, but it's the truth.'

How could Will deny it, while that knife was still in his hand? Taking his gaze from Steep's face, he sought the
weapon out, following the form of the man's shoulder, along his arm to the fist that was still gripping the blade,
and down, down to his own hand, which still grasped the hilt.

Then, seeing it, he let it go. It was so simple to do. The sum of the blade's harms would not be swelled by his
wielding of it; not by a single wound.

The consequence of his letting go was instantaneous. The darkness was instantly extinguished, and the solid
world sprang up around him: the hallway, the body, the staircase that led up to the open roof, through which
straight beams of sun were coming.

And in front of him, Steep; staring at him with a curious look on his face. Then he shuddered, and his fingers
opened just enough to allow the blade to slide from his grip. It had opened his palm, deeply, and the wound was
seeping. It wasn't blood that came, however. It was the same stuff that had seeped from Rosa's body; finer
threads from a smaller wound, but the same bright liquor. Fragments of it curled lazily around his fingers, and
without thinking what he was doing, Will reached out to touch it. The threads sensed him, and came to meet his
hand. He heard Steep tell him no, but it was too late. Contact had been made. Once again, he felt the matter pass
into him and through him. This time, however, he was prepared to watch for its revelation, and he wasn't
disappointed. The face before him unveiled itself, its flesh confessing the mystery that lay beneath. He knew it
already. The same strange beauty he'd seen lurking in Rosa was here in Steep too: the form of the Nilotic, like
something carved from the eternal.

'What did Rukenau do to you two?' Will said softly.

The flesh inside Steep's flesh stared out at him like a prisoner, despairing of release. 'Tell me,' Will pressed. Still
it said nothing. Yet it wanted to speak; Will could see the desire to do so in its eyes; how it wanted to tell its
story. He leaned a little closer to it. 'Try,' he said.

It inclined its head towards him, until their mouths were only three or four inches apart. No sound escaped it;
nor could, Will suspected. The prisoner had been mute too long to find its voice again so quickly. But while
they were so close, gaze meeting gaze, he could not waste its proximity. He leaned another inch towards it, and
the Nilotic, knowing what was coming, smiled. Then Will kissed it, lightly, reverently, on the lips.
The creature returned his kiss, pressing its cool mouth against his.

The next moment, as had happened with Rosa, the thread of light burned itself out in him, and was gone. The
veil fell instantly, obscuring what lay beneath, and the face Will was kissing was Steep's face.
Jacob pushed him away with a shout of disgust, as though he'd momentarily shared Will's trance and only now
realized what the power inside him had sanctioned. Then he fell back against the wall, clenching his wounded
hand tight closed to be certain no more of this traitorous fluid escaped, and with the back of his other hand,
wiped his lips clean. He scoured every trace of gentility from his face as he did so. All perplexity, all doubt,
were gone. Fixing Will with a rabid gaze, he reached down and picked up the knife that lay between them.
There was no room for further exchange, Will knew. Steep wasn't going to be talking about God or forgiveness
any longer. All he wanted to do was kill the man who'd just kissed him.

Even though he knew there was no hope of peace now, Will took his time as he retreated to the door, studying
Steep. When next they met, it would be death for one of them; this would most likely be his last opportunity to
look at the man whose brotherhood he had so passionately wanted to share. A kiss such as they'd exchanged
was nothing to a man who was certain of himself. But Steep was not certain; never had been. Like so many of
the men Will had watched and wanted in his life, he lived in fear of his manhood being seen for what it was, a
murderous figment; a trick of spit and swagger that concealed a far stranger spirit.

He could watch no longer; another five seconds and the knife would be at his throat. He turned, and took
himself off across the threshold, down the path and out into the street. Steep didn't follow. He would brood a
while, Will guessed, putting his thoughts in murderous order before he began his final pursuit.
And pursue he would. Will had kissed the spirit in him, and that was a crime the figment would never forgive. It
would come, knife in hand. Nothing was more certain.

He Enters The House
Of The World

Will emerged from the Donnelly house in a daze and remained that way for the next hour or so. He was aware
of getting into Frannie's car, Rosa half-lying across the seat behind him, and their taking off out of the village as
though they had a horde of fallen angels on their heels; but he was monosyllabic in his responses to Frannie's
enquiries, resenting her attempts to snap him out of his fugue. Was he hurt? she wanted to know. He told her no.
And Steep; what about Steep? Alive, he told her. Hurt? she asked. Yes, he told her. Badly enough to kill him?
she asked. He told her no. Pity, she said.

A little while later, they stopped at a garage and Frannie got out to use the phone. He didn't care why. But she
told him anyway when she got back into the driver's seat. She'd called the police, to tell them where to find
Sherwood's body. She was stupid not to have done it earlier, she said. Maybe they would have caught Steep.
'Never,' he said.

They drove on again in silence. Rain began to spatter the windscreen; fat drops slapping hard against the
glass. He wound the window halfway down, and the rain came in against his face, and the smell of the rain too:
tangy, metallic. Slowly, the chill began to rouse him from his trance. The numbness in his knife-hand started to
recede, and his fingers and palm began instead to ache. As the minutes passed he began to pay some attention to
the journey he was on, though there was nothing of any great significance to be noted. The roads they were
travelling were neither jammed nor deserted, the weather neither foul nor fine; sometimes the clouds would
unleash a little rain, sometimes they would show a sliver of blue. It was all reassuringly mundane, and he took
refuge from his memories of Steep's vision by making himself its witness. There to his left was a car carrying
two nuns and a child; there was a woman putting on lipstick as she drove; there was a bridge being demolished,
and a train running parallel to the motorway for a little distance, with men and women rocking in its windows,
staring out, glassy-eyed. There was a sign, pointing north to Glasgow: one hundred and eighty miles.
And then without warning, Frannie said, 'I'm sorry. We have to stop,' and bringing the vehicle over to the side
of the motorway, got out. It was all Will could do to stir himself from his seat, but at length he did so. The rain was coming on again; his scalp ached where the drops struck. 'Are ... you ... sick?' he asked her.
It was the first time he'd put a sentence together since they'd left the village, and it took effort.

'No,' Frannie said, wiping rain from her eyes.

'Then what's wrong?'

'I have to go back,' she said. 'I can't...' she shook her head, plainly enraged at herself. 'I shouldn't have left him.
What was I thinking? He's my own brother.'

'He's dead,' Will said. 'You can't help him.'

She covered her mouth with her hand, still shaking her head. There were tears mingling with the rain, running
down her face.

'If you want to go back,' Will said, 'we'll go back.'

Frannie's hand slid from her face. 'I don't know what I want,' she said. 'Then what would Sherwood have
wanted?'

Frannie gazed forlornly at the bundled figure in the back of the car. 'He would have done his damnedest to make
Rosa happy. Lord knows why, but that's what he would have done.' She looked at Will now, her expression
close to utter despair, 'You know, I've spent most of my adult life doing things to accommodate him?' she said.
'I suppose I may as well do this one last thing.' She sighed. 'But this is the last, damn it.'

Will took over the wheel for the next stage of the journey.

'Where are we headed?' he wanted to know.

'To Oban,' Frannie told him.

'What's in Oban?'

'It's where you catch the ferries for the islands.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I almost went, five or six years ago, with a group from the church. To see Iona. But I cancelled at the
last minute.'

'Sherwood?'

'Of course. He didn't want to be left alone. So I didn't go,'

'We still don't know which island we're heading for,' Will said. 'I got an old atlas from the house. Do you want
to run through the names with Rosa, to see if any of them ring a bell?' He glanced over his shoulder. 'Are you
awake?'

'Always,' Rosa said. Her voice was weak.

'How are you feeling?'

'Tired,' she said.

'How's the bandage holding up?' Frannie asked her.

'It's intact,' Rosa said. 'I'm not going to die on you, don't worry. I'll hold on till I see Rukenau.'

'Where's the atlas?' Frannie wanted to know.

'On the floor behind you,' Will told her. She reached round and picked

it up. 'Have you considered that Rukenau may be dead?' Will said to Rosa.

'He had no plans to die,' Rosa replied.

'He might have done it anyway.'

'Then I'll find his grave and lie down with him,' she said. 'And maybe his dust will forgive mine.'

Frannie had found the Western Isles in the atlas, and now began to recite their names, starting with the Outer
Hebrides. 'Lewis, Harris, North Uist, South Uist, Barra, Benbecula...' Then on to the Inner, 'Mull, Coll, Tiree,
Islay, Skye...' Rosa knew none of them. There were some, Frannie pointed out, that were too small to be
named in the atlas; maybe it was one of them. When they reached Oban they'd get a more detailed map, and try
again. Rosa wasn't very optimistic. She'd never been very good remembering names, she said. That had always
been Steep's forte. She'd been good with faces, however, whereas he

'Let's not talk about him,' Frannie said, and Rosa fell silent.

So on they went. Through the Lake District to the Scottish border, and, on, as the afternoon dwindled, past the
shipyards of Clydebank, alongside Loch Lomond and on through Luss and Crianlarich up to Tyndrum. There
was for Will an almost sublime moment a few miles short of Oban when the wind brought the smell of the sea
his way. Some forty years on the planet, and the chill scent of sharp salt still moved him, bringing back
childhood dreams of the faraway. He had long ago made these dreams a reality, of course; seen more of the
world than most. But the promise of sea and horizon still caught at his heart, and tonight, with the last of the
light sinking west, he knew why. They were the masks of something far more profound, those dreams of perfect
islands where perfect love might be found. Was it any wonder his spirits rose as the road brought them down
through the steep town to the harbour? Here, for the first time, he felt as if the physical world was in step with
its deeper significance, the forms of his yearning made concrete. Here was the busy quayside from which they
would depart, here was the Sound of Mull, its unwelcoming waters leading the eye out towards the sea. What
lay across those waters, far from the comfort of this little harbour, was not just an island; it was the possibility
that his spirit's voyage would find completion; where he would know, perhaps, why God had seeded him with
yearning.