Sacrament (7 page)

i

He did not go up the hill the following day to look for Jacob, nor indeed the day following that. He came home
to such a firestorm of accusations - his mother in racking tears, certain he was dead, his father, white with fury,
just as certain he wasn't - that he dared not step over the threshold. Hugo wasn't a violent man. He prided
himself on his reasonableness. But he made an exception in this case, and beat his son so hard - with a book, of
all things - he reduced them both to tears: Will, of pain, his father of anguish that he'd lost so much control.

He wasn't interested in Will's explanations. He simply told his son that while he, Hugo, didn't care if Will went
wandering for the rest of his damn life, Eleanor did, and hadn't she suffered enough for one lifetime?

So Will stayed at home and nursed his bruises and his rage. After forty-eight hours his mother tried to make
some kind of peace, telling him how frightened she'd been that some harm had befallen him.

'Why?' he said to her sullenly.

'Whatever do you mean?'

'I mean why should you worry if something happens to me? You never cared before ...'

'Oh, William ...' she said softly. There was only a trace of accusation in her voice. It was mostly sorrow.

'You don't,' he sat flatly. 'You know you don't. All you ever think about is him.' He didn't need to name the
missing member of this equation. 'I'm not important to you. You said so.' This was not strictly the case. She'd
never used those precise words. But the lie sounded true enough.

'I'm sure I didn't mean it,' she said. 'It's just been so hard for me since Nathaniel died-' Her fingers went to his
face as she spoke, and gently stroked his cheek. 'He was so ... so...'

He was barely listening to her. He was thinking of Rosa McGee, and how she had touched his face and spoken
to him softly. Only she'd not been talking about how fine some other boy was while she did so. She'd been
telling him what a treasure he was, how nimble, how useful. This woman who had barely known his name had
found in him qualities his own mother could not see. It made him sad and angry at the same time.

'Why do you keep talking about him?' Will said. 'He's dead.'

Eleanor's fingers fell from Will's face, and she looked at him with tear-filled eyes. 'No,' she said, 'he'll never be
dead. Not to me. I don't expect you to understand. How could you? But your brother was very special to me.
Very precious. So he'll never be dead as far as I'm concerned.'

Something happened in Will at that moment. A scrap of hope that had stayed green in the months since the
accident withered and went to dust. He didn't say anything. He just got up and left her to her tears.

ii

After two days of home-bound penance he went to school. It was a smaller place than St Margaret's, which he
liked, its buildings older, its playground lined with trees instead of railings. He kept to himself for the first
week, barely speaking to anyone. At the beginning of the second week, however, minding his own business at
lunchtime, a familiar face appeared in front of him. It was Frannie.

'Here you are,' she said, as though she'd been looking for him.

'Hello,' he said, glancing around to see if Sherwood the Brat was also in evidence. He wasn't.

'I thought you'd be gone on your trip by now.'

'I will,' he said. 'I'll go.'

'I know,' Frannie said, quite sincerely. 'After we met I kept thinking maybe I'd go too. Not with you-'she
hastened to add '-but one day I'd just leave.'

'Go as far away as possible,' Will said.

'As far away as possible,' Frannie replied, her echoing of his words - a kind of pact. 'There's not much worth
seeing around here,' she went on, 'unless you go into ... you know...'

'You can talk about Manchester,' Will said. 'Just 'cause my brother was killed there ... it's no big deal to me. I
mean, he wasn't really my brother.' Will felt a delicious lie being born. 'I'm adopted, you see.'

'You are?'

'Nobody knows who my real Mum and Dad are.'

'Oh wow. Is this a secret?' Will nodded. 'So I can't even tell Sherwood.'

'Better not,' Will replied, with a fine show of seriousness. 'He might spread it around.'

The bell was ringing, calling them back to their classes. The fierce Miss Hartley, a big-bosomed woman whose
merest whisper intimidated her charges, was eyeing Will and Frannie.

'Frances Cunningham!' she boomed, 'will you get a move on?' Frannie pulled a face and ran, leaving Miss
Hartley to focus her attention on Will. 'You are-?'

'William Rabjohns.'

'Oh yes,' she said darkly, as though she'd heard news of him and it wasn't good.
He stood his ground, feeling quite calm. This was strange for him. At St Margaret's he had been intimidated by
several of the staff, feeling remotely that they were part of his father's clan. But this woman seemed to him
absurd, with her sickly sweet perfume and her fat neck. There was nothing to be afraid of here.
Perhaps she saw how unmoved he was, because she stared at him with a well-practised curl in her lip.
'What are you smiling at?' she said.

He wasn't aware that he was, until she remarked upon it. He felt his stomach churn with a strange exhilaration;
then he said:

'You.'

'What?'

He made the smile a grin. 'You,' he said again. 'I'm smiling at you.'

She frowned at him. He kept grinning, thinking as he did so that he was baring his teeth to her, like a wolf.
'Where are you ... supposed to be?' she said to him.

'In the gym,' he replied. He kept looking straight at her; kept grinning. And at last it was she who looked away.
'You'd better ... get along then, hadn't you?' she said to him.

'If we've finished talking,' he said, hoping to goad her into further response.

But no. 'We've finished,' she said.

He was reluctant to take his eyes off her. If he kept staring, he thought, he could surely bore a hole in her, the
way a magnifying glass burned a hole in a piece of paper.

'I won't have insolence from anyone,' she said. 'Least of all a new boy. Now get to your class.'
He had little choice. Off he went. But as he walked past her he said:

'Thank you, Miss Hartley,' in a soft voice, and he was sure he saw her shudder.

Something was happening to him. There were little signs of it every day. He would look up at the sky and feel a
strange surge of exhilaration, as though some part of him were taking flight, rising up out of his own head. He
would wake long after midnight and even though it was bitterly cold, open the window and listen to the world
going on in darkness, imagining how it was on the heights. Twice he ventured out in the middle of the night, up
the slope behind the house, hoping he might meet Jacob up there somewhere, star-watching; or Mrs McGee,
chasing hares. But he saw no sign of them, and though he listened intently to every gossipy conversation when
he was in the village - picking up pork chops for Adele Bottrall to cook with apples for Papa, or a sheaf of
magazines for his mother to flick through - he never heard anybody mention Jacob or Rosa. They lived in some
secret place, he concluded, where they could not be troubled by the workaday world. Other than himself, he
doubted anybody in the valley even knew they existed.

He didn't pine for them. He would find them again, or they him, when the time was right. He was certain of that.
Meanwhile, the strange epiphanies continued. Everywhere around him, the world was making miraculous signs
for him to read. In the curlicues of frost on his window when he rose; in the patterns that the sheep made,
straggling the hill; in the din of the river, swelled to its full measure by an autumn that brought more than its
share of rain.

At last, he had to share these mysteries with somebody. He chose Frannie, not because he was certain she'd
understand, but because she was the only one he trusted enough.

They were sitting in the living-room of the Cunningham house, which was adjacent to the junkyard owned by
Frannie's father. The house was small, but cosy, as ordered and neat as the yard outside was chaotic: a
needlepoint prayer framed above the mantelpiece, blessing the hearth and all who gather there; a teak china
cabinet with an heirloom tea-service elegantly but not boastfully displayed; a plain brass clock on the table, and
beside it a cut-glass bowl heaped with pears and oranges. Here, in this womb of certainties, Will told Frannie of
the feelings that had risen in him of late, and how they had begun the day the two of them met. He didn't
mention Jacob and Rosa at first - they were the secret he was most loath to share, and he was by no means
certain he would do so but he did talk about venturing into the Courthouse.

'Oh, I asked my Mum about that,' Frannie said. 'And she told me the story.'

'What is it?' Will said.

'There was this man called Bartholomeus,' she said. 'He lived in the valley, when there were still lead mines
everywhere.'

'I didn't know there were mines.'

'Well there were. And he made a lot of money from them. But he wasn't quite right in the head, that's what
Mum said, because he had this idea that people didn't treat animals properly, and the only way to stop people
being cruel was to have a court, which would only be for animals.'

'Who was the judge?'

'He was. And the jury probably.' She shrugged. 'I don't know the whole story, just those bits-'

'So he built the Courthouse.'

'He built it, but he didn't finish it.'

'Did he run out of money?'

'My Mum says he was probably put in a loony bin, because of what he was doing. I mean, nobody wanted him
bringing animals into his Courthouse and making laws about how people had to treat them better.'

'That was what he was doing?' Will said, with a little smile.

'Something like that. I don't know if anybody's really sure. He's been dead for a hundred and fifty years.'

'It's a sad story,' said Will, thinking of the strange magnificence of Bartholomeus' folly.

'He was better put away. Safer for everybody.'

'Safer?'

'I mean if he was going to try and accuse people of doing things to animals. We all do things to animals. It's
natural.'

She sounded like her mother when she spoke like this. Genial enough, but unmovable. This was her stated
opinion and nothing would sway her from it. Listening to her, his enthusiasm for sharing what he'd seen began
to wane. Perhaps after all she was not the person to understand his feelings. Perhaps she'd think he was like Mr
Bartholomeus, and better put away.

But now, her story of the Courthouse finished, she said: 'What were you telling me about?'

'I wasn't,' Will replied.

'No, you were in the middle of saying something-'

'Well it probably wasn't important,' Will said, 'or I'd remember what it was.' He got up from his seat. 'I'd better
be off,' he said.

Frannie looked more than a little puzzled, but he pretended not to notice the expression on her face.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said.

'Sometimes you're really odd,' she said to him. 'Did you know that?'

'No.'

'You know you are,' she said, with a faint tone of accusation. 'And I think you like it.'

Will couldn't keep a smile from his lips. 'Maybe I do,' he said.

At which juncture, the door was flung open and Sherwood marched in. He had feathers woven in to his hair.

'You know what I am?'

'A chicken,' Will said.

'No, I'm not a chicken,' Sherwood said, deeply offended.

'That's what you look like.'

'I'm Geronimo.'

'Geronimo the chicken,' Will laughed.

'I hate you,' said Sherwood, 'and so does everybody at school.'

'Sherwood, be quiet,' Frannie said.

'They do,' Sherwood went on. 'They all think you're daft and they talk behind your back and they call you
William Daffy.' Now it was Sherwood who laughed. 'Daffy William! William Daffy!' Frannie kept trying to
hush him, but it was a lost cause. He was going to crow till he was done.

'I don't care!' Will yelled above the clamour. 'You're a cretin, and I don't care!'

So saying, he picked up his coat and pushing past Sherwood - who had begun a little dance in rhythm with his
chant - headed for the door. Frannie was still trying to shush her brother, but in vain. He was in a self-
perpetuating frenzy, yelling and jumping.

In truth, Will was glad of the interruption. It gave him the perfect excuse to make his exit, which he did in
double-quick time, before Frannie had a chance to silence her brother. He needn't have worried. When he was
out of the house, past the junkyard and at the end of Samson Road he could still hear Sherwood's rantings
emerging from the house.

i

We moved out here because you wanted to move, Eleanor. Please remember that. We came here because of
you.'

'I know, Hugo.'

'So what are you saying? That we should move again?' Will couldn't hear his mother's despair. Her quiet words
were buried in sobs. But he heard his father's response. 'Lord, Eleanor, you've got to stop crying. We can't have
an intelligent conversation if you just start crying whenever we talk about Manchester. If you don't want to go
back there, that's fine by me, but I need some answers from you. We can't go on like this, with you taking so
many pills you can't keep count. It's not a life, Eleanor.' Did she say, I know? Will thought she did, though it
was hard to hear her through the door. 'I want what's best for you. What's best for us all.'

Now Will did hear her. 'I can't stay here,' she said.

'Well, once and for all: do you want to go back to Manchester?'

Her reply was simply repetition. 'I know I can't stay here.'

'Fine,' Hugo replied. 'We'll move back. Never mind that we sold the house. Never mind that we've spent
thousands of pounds moving. We'll just go back.' His voice was rising in volume; so was the sound of Eleanor's
sobs. Will had heard enough. He retreated from the door, and scurried upstairs, disappearing from sight just as
the living-room door opened and his father stormed out.

ii

The conversation threw Will into a state of panic. They couldn't leave, not now. Not when for the first time in
his life he felt things coming clear. If he went back to Manchester it would be like a prison sentence. He'd
wither away and die.

What was the alternative? There was only one. He'd run away, as he'd boasted he would to Frannie, the first day
they'd met. He'd plan it carefully, so that nothing was left to chance: be sure he had money and clothes; and of
course a destination. Of these three the third was the most problematical. Money he could steal (he knew where
his mother

kept her spare cash) and clothes he could pack, but where was he to go?

He consulted the map of the world on his bedroom wall, matching to those pastel-coloured shapes impressions
he'd gleaned from television or magazines. Scandinavia? Too cold and dark. Italy? Maybe. But he spoke no
Italian and he wasn't a quick learner. French he knew a little, and he had French blood in him, but France wasn't
far enough. If he was going to go travelling, then he wanted it to be more than a ferry trip away. America,
perhaps? Ah, now there was a thought. He ran his finger over the country from state to state, luxuriating in the
names. Mississippi; Wyoming; New Mexico; California. His mood lifted at the prospect. All he needed was
some advice about how to get out of the country, and he knew exactly where to get that: from Jacob Steep.

He went out looking for Steep and Rosa McGee the very next day. It was by now the middle of November, and
the hours of daylight were short, but he made the most of them, skipping school for three consecutive days to
climb the fells and look for some sign of the pair's presence. They were chilly journeys: though there was not
yet snow on the hills the frost was so thick it dusted the slopes like a flurry, and the sun never emerged for long
enough to melt it.

The sheep had already descended to the lower pastures to graze, but he was not entirely alone on the heights.
Hares and foxes, even the occasional deer, had left their tracks in the frozen grass. But this was the only sign of
life he encountered. Of Jacob and Rosa he saw not so much as a boot-print.

Then, on the evening of the third day, Frannie came to the house.

'You don't look as if you've got 'flu,' she said to Will. (He'd forged a note to that effect, explaining his absence.)

'Is that why you came?' he said. 'To check up on me?'

'Don't be daft,' she said. 'I came 'cause I've got something to tell you. Something strange.'

'What?'

'Remember we talked about the Courthouse?'

'Of course.'

'Well, I went to look at it. And you know what?'

'What?'

'There's somebody living there.'

'In the Courthouse?'

She nodded. By the look on her face it was apparent whatever she'd seen had unnerved her.

'Did you go in?' he asked her.

She shook her head. 'I just saw this woman at the door.'

'What did she look like?' Will asked, scarcely daring to hope.

'She was dressed in black-'

It's her, he thought. It's Mrs McGee. And wherever Rosa was, could Jacob be far away?

Frannie had caught the look of excitement on his face. 'What is it?' she said.

'It's who,' he said, 'not what.'

'Who then? Is it somebody you know?'

'A little,' he replied. 'Her name's Rosa.'

'I've never seen her before,' Frannie said. 'And I've lived here all my life.'

'They keep themselves to themselves,' Will replied.

'There's somebody else?'

He was so covetous of the knowledge, he almost didn't tell her. But then she'd brought him this wonderful news,
hadn't she? He owed her something by way of recompense. 'There's two of them,' Will said. 'The woman's name
is Rosa McGee. The man's called Jacob Steep.'

'I've never heard of either of them. Are they gypsies, or homeless people?'

'If they're homeless it's because they want to be,' Will said.

'But it must be so cold in that place. You said it was bare inside.'

'It is.'

'So they're just hiding in an empty place like that?' She shook her head. 'Weird,' she said. 'How do you know
them, anyhow?'

'I met them while I was out walking,' he replied, which was close enough to the truth. 'Thanks for telling me. I'd
better ... I've got a whole lot of things to do.'

'You're going to see them, aren't you?' Frannie said. 'I want to come with you.'

'No!'

'Why not?'

'Because they're not your friends.'

'They're not yours either,' Frannie said. 'They're just people you met once. That's what you said.'

'I don't want you there,' Will said.

Frannie's mouth got tight. 'You know, you don't have to be so horrible about it,' she said to Will. He said
nothing. She stared hard at him, as if willing him to change his mind. Still he said nothing; did nothing. After a
few moments she gave up, and without another word marched to the front door.

'Are you leaving already?' Adele said.

Frannie had the door open. Her bicycle was propped up against the gate. Without even answering Adele, she got
on her bike and was away.

'Was she upset about something?' Adele wanted to know.

'Nothing important,' Will replied.

It was almost dark, and cold. He knew from bitter experience to go out prepared for the worst, but it was hard to
think coherently about boots and gloves and a sweater when the sound of his heart was so loud in his head, and
all he could think was: I've found them, I've found them.

His father was not yet back from Manchester, and his mother was in Halifax today, seeing her doctor, so the
only person he had to alert to his departure was Adele. She was in the midst of cooking, and didn't bother to ask
him where he was going. Only as he slammed the door did she yell that he should be back by seven. He didn't
bother to reply. Just set off down the darkening road towards the Courthouse, certain Jacob already knew he
was coming.

The soul who had taken the name of Jacob Steep stood on the threshold of the Courthouse, and clung to the
frame of the door. Dusk was always a time of weakness for both himself and Mrs McGee. This dusk was no
exception. His innards convulsed, his limbs trembled, his temples throbbed. The very sight of the dimming sky,
though it was tonight most picturesque, made an infant of him.
It was the same story at dawn. They were both at these hours overtaken with such fatigue it was all they could
do to stand upright. Indeed tonight it had proved impossible for Rosa. She had retreated into the Courthouse and
was lying down, moaning, calling for him once in a while. He did not go to her. He stayed at the door, and
waited for a sign.

That was the paradox of this hour: that when he was most unmanned was when he was most likely to hear a call
to duty, his assassin's heart roused, his assassin's blood surging. And tonight, he was eager for news. They had
languished here long enough. It was time to move on. But first he needed a destination, a dispatch, and that
meant facing the sickening spectacle of twilight.

He did not know why this hour was so distressing to their systems, but it was one more proof - if he needed it -
that they were not of ordinary stock. In the depths of the night, when the human world was asleep, and
dreaming its narrow dreams, he was bright and blithe as a child, his body tireless. He could do his worst at that
hour, quicker than the quickest executioner with his knife, or better still with his hands, taking lives away. And
by day, in countries where the noon heat was crucifying, he was just as tireless. Death's perfect agent, sudden
and swift. Day, in truth, suited him better than night, because by day he had the proper light by which to make
his drawings, and both as a maker of pictures and a maker of corpses he liked to pay close attention to the
details. The sweep of a feather, the slope of a snout; the timbre of a sob, the tang of a puke. It was all worthy of
his study.

But whether light or dark had hold of the world, he had the energy of a man a tenth his age. It was only in the
grey time that the weakness consumed him, and he found himself clinging to something solid to keep himself
standing. He hated the sensation, but he refused to moan. Such complaints were for women and children, not for
soldiers. That was not to say he hadn't heard soldiers moan in his time; he had. He'd lived long enough to have
known many wars, large and small, and though he had never sought out a battlefield, his work had by chance
brought him to a place of combat more than once. He had seen how men responded to their agonies, when they
were beset. How they wept, how they called for mercy and their mothers.

Jacob had no interest in mercy; neither in its dispensing nor its receiving. He was set against the sentimental
world as any pure force must be, entertaining neither kindness nor cruelty in his dealings. He scorned the
comfort of prayer, and the distractions of fancy; he mocked grief, he mocked hope. He mocked despair also.
The only quality he revered was patience, bought with the knowledge that all things pass. The sun would drop
out of sight soon enough, and the weakness in his limbs melt into strength. All he had to do was wait.
From inside, the sound of motion. And then, Rosa's sighing voice: 'I've been remembering,' she said.
'You have not,' he told her. Sometimes the pains of this hour made her delirious.

'I have. I swear,' she said. 'An island comes to mind. Do you remember an island? With wide, white shores? No
trees. I've looked for trees and there are none. Oh...' Her words became groans again, and the groans turned
into sobs. 'Oh, I would die now, gladly.'

'No, you wouldn't.'

'Come and comfort me.'

'I have no wish-'

'You must, Jacob. Oh ... oh, Lord in heaven ... why do we suffer so?'

Much as he wanted to stay out of her range, her sobs were too poignant to be ignored. He turned his back on the
dying day, and strode down the corridor to the Courtroom itself. Mrs McGee was lying on the ground in the
midst of her veils. She had lit a host of candles around her, as though their light might ameliorate the cruelty of
the hour.

'Lie with me,' she said, looking up at him.

'It will do us no good.'

'We may get a child.'

'And that will do us no good, either,' he replied, 'as well you know.'

'Then lie with me for the comfort of it,' she said, her gaze fond. 'It is such agony to be separated from you,
Jacob.'

'I'm here,' he said, curbing his former harshness.

'Not close enough,' she said with a tiny smile.

He walked towards her. Stood at her feet.

'Still ... not close enough,' she said to him. 'I feel so weak, Jacob.'

'It will pass. You know it will.'

'At times like this I know nothing,' she said, 'except how much I need you.' She reached down and plucked at
her skirt, watching his face all the while. 'With me,' she murmured. 'In me.'

He made no reply. 'Are you too weak, Jacob?' she said, still pulling up her skirt. 'Is the mystery too much for
you?'

'It's no mystery,' he replied. 'Not after all these years.'

Now she smiled, and tugged the skirt to the middle of her thighs. She had fine legs; solid, meaty legs, her skin
pearly in the candlelight. Sighing, she slipped her hand beneath her dress, and fingered herself, her hips rising to
meet her touch.

'It's deep, love,' she said. 'And dark. And all wet for you.' She pulled her skirt up to her waist. 'Look,' she said.
She had spread herself, to give him a look at her. 'Don't tell me that isn't a pretty thing. A perfect little cunny,
that.' Her gaze went from his face to his groin. 'And you like the look of it, and don't you pretend you don't.'

She was right, of course. As soon as she'd started to raise her skirt his dunderheaded member had started to
swell, demanding its due. As if his limbs weren't weak enough, without having to lose blood to its ambition.

'I'm tight, Mr Steep.'

'I'm sure you are.'

'Like a virgin on her wedding night I am. Look, I can barely fit my littlest finger in there. You'll have to do me
some violence, I suspect.'

She knew what effect this kind of talk had upon him. A little shudder of anticipation passed through him, and he
proceeded to take off his coat.

'Unbutton yourself,' Mrs McGee said, her voice bruised. 'Let me see what you have there.'

He cast his coat away and fumbled with the buttons of his mud-spattered trousers. She watched him, smiling, as
he brought his member out.

'Oh now look at that,' she said, not unappreciatively. 'I think it wants a dip in my cunny.'