Broken Voices (Kindle Single) (9 page)

I couldn’t see
what he was doing because his body was in the way. ‘Rabbit! For God’s sake,
come back! You must be near that trapdoor if you’re not on it already.’

I had a sickening
vision of the trapdoor breaking free, Faraday falling, just like Goldsworthy,
to the floor of the tower below.

At that moment,
the lantern went out.

‘I’m scared,’ Faraday said. ‘I’m so
scared.’

In the darkness
his voice seemed to come from very far away. I had not realized what a
difference that little lantern made.

‘It’s all
right,’ I said, though it felt all wrong. ‘Find the other candles. Light one of
those.’

I heard a
scrabbling sound. Then silence. Then ragged breathing and more scrabbling.

‘Hurry up,’ I
said. ‘Come on, Rabbit, we haven’t got all night.’

‘I... I can’t
find them.’ He sounded further away than he had been.

‘Don’t be
stupid.’ I heard the panic in my voice. I swallowed it. ‘The ones from the
choir vestry. Remember?’

‘I put them
down when I was looking for the key. I must have forgotten to pick them up.’

I bit my lower
lip and tasted blood. ‘We haven’t time for jokes.’

‘It isn’t a
joke. I’m sorry.’

I nearly
shouted at him. But I knew there was no point. ‘You’ve got matches,’ I said.
‘Light one and find where I am. Walk towards me. When the match goes out, I’ll
say something. Come towards the sound.’

There was
another delay. Then a scrape and a flare of light, shocking in its intensity.

‘It’s the last
one,’ he said.

Faraday rose to
his feet as he spoke. He was in the centre of the ringing chamber, I saw, which
might well be the very place where the trapdoor was. He moved too quickly. The
flame guttered and died.

For the first
time we were in complete darkness. I felt dizzy again. The tower sensed our new
weakness. It seemed to shift beneath my feet like a sleeping giant making a
minute adjustment to its position.

Faraday
whimpered.

‘Come towards
me,’ I whispered. ‘Keep together.’

I heard him
crawling. A moment later the sound stopped.

‘Hurry up,’ I
hissed.

‘I can hear
it.’

‘What?’

‘The music.’

‘For God’s sake
— shut up about that damned music. Come here.’

‘It’s
beautiful,’ he murmured. But he started to crawl again.

I turned round,
stretched out my hands and tried to find the door. I knew it wasn’t far away.
But the darkness had disorientated me. Faraday was still shuffling towards me.

‘Where are
you?’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Here, you
fool.’

He sounded much
nearer than I had expected. Something brushed the skirt of my coat. I jumped
back and screamed like a girl. Something rattled in my coat.

‘It’s me,’
Faraday said. ‘Oh, I’m so glad we’re together.’

So was I,
though I didn’t say so.

‘What was
that?’ he said. ‘When I touched you... it sounded like—’

‘Matches,’ I
said. ‘Matches.’

I fumbled in
the pocket of my overcoat. Hours ago, in another lifetime, I had stood on top
of the little wooded hill with Faraday and smoked two Woodbines. Afterwards I
had hidden both the cigarettes and the matches in my coat. I had a hole in one
of the pockets, which made it possible to push contraband items deep into the
lining.

My fingers were
cold and shaking. The hole in the pocket was small. It took me an age to find
and extract the matches. I shook the box. It sounded hollow, nearly empty.

I opened it,
first making sure it was the right way up, and counted the remaining matches.
There were only six left.

‘I can still
hear it,’ Faraday said. ‘The music.’

‘Shut up. If
we’re careful we can just do it.’ I calculated that we would have to use the
matches only when we really needed them; for most of the time we would have to
rely on our sense of touch. ‘Hold on to my belt again.’

He obeyed. I
scraped the first match on the side of the box. It misfired, the head crumbling
to nothing.

‘Are they
damp?’ Faraday said.

I didn’t reply.
That was what I was afraid of. I tried again: this time the match fired up. I
turned. The door was on my right, perhaps three yards away. I took a step
towards it. The movement made the flame flicker and die.

My fingers
brushed against the wood of the door.

‘Light another
match,’ Faraday said.

‘Not yet. Just
follow me. We’ll go down the stairs very slowly. Don’t hurry. Keep your right
hand on the wall.’

Faraday was so
close to me I felt his breath on my neck. The stairs were steep. I concentrated
on the wall, on finding the rise of each stair with my foot, on keeping Faraday
from going too quickly.

The archway
leading from the landing to the arcade was just visible ahead of us. I reached
the landing and stopped. Faraday bumped into me. I took out the box of matches.
Just as I was poised to light one, he said, ‘It’s not quite dark.’

I ignored him.
I thought that, after the confined space of the ringing chamber and stairs, it
was naturally a little less dark in the body of the Cathedral.

I struck the
third match. The flame burst out, dazzling me. Beyond the archway was the
passageway behind the arcade and, at the end, the open door to the next
staircase. All we had to do was keep to the wall on our right and not think
about what lay on our left.

‘Boys?’ a man
shouted far below. ‘Boys?’

Faraday said
something I couldn’t catch. I held onto the pillar of the arch and looked down
into the church. Light was moving in the nave.

‘Boys! Where
are you?’

It was Mr
Ratcliffe. His voice sounded younger and more vigorous than usual but very far
away.

‘Up here, sir,’
I called. ‘In the west tower.’

I heard his
hurrying footsteps. He came out of the south aisle and into the nave. He tried
to run but couldn’t manage it. He slowed to a fast walk. He was carrying a
lantern, which swung wildly to and fro in his hand.

Mr Ratcliffe
reached the space under the tower. He stood panting in a puddle of light.

‘I can’t see
you,’ he called. ‘Where are you?’

I struck a
match.

‘Good God — you
idiotic children! Stay where you are. Don’t move an inch.’

It was a relief
to be told what to do. Mr Ratcliffe’s footsteps hurried across the floor. The
sound changed as he mounted the staircase but we could still see him.

‘We never found
it,’ Faraday said. ‘The anthem, I mean.’

‘If you don’t
shut up about that bloody anthem, I’ll bloody kill you,’ I hissed.

He started to
cry, irritating little sniffles. It enraged me that he could be such a
self-centred little beast. I was about to be in the worst trouble I had ever
been in and it was his fault. I saw now what I should have seen earlier, that
being caught didn’t matter to him, because he was already in disgrace. But it
was different for me.

The footsteps
were nearer now. I heard Mr Ratcliffe’s laboured breathing. Light glowed at the
far end of the arcade, growing stronger every minute.

There he was,
in the doorway, gasping for air, holding the lantern high.

‘Don’t — move—’
he said again, sucking in breath between words.

It was Mr
Ratcliffe but it did not look like him. He had taken his teeth out for the
night, and his face had collapsed in on itself, making him a stranger with a
familiar voice.

‘I — I shall
come over — to you. Bring you back — one by one.’

He was hatless,
his hair unbrushed. He wore his overcoat, which hung open, revealing a dressing
gown and striped pyjamas.

‘Don’t move,’
he repeated yet again. ‘Please. Please.’

He edged onto
the passageway and staggered slowly towards us. ‘Don’t move,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t move.’

‘Look,’ Faraday
said loudly and urgently. ‘Look—’

Mr Ratcliffe’s
head jerked to the right. His body twisted after it. He fell heavily against
the railing. There was a moment when nothing happened, when everything simply
stopped moving. Then the railing gave way.

The lantern
clattered to the floor of the passage. The candle guttered but the flame lasted
another second or two.

Time enough and
more for Mr Ratcliffe to fall into the darkness.

Faraday wouldn’t move. He sat down on
the bottom step and started to cry. I left him to it. I crawled across the arcade
— it seemed safer that way. I found the lantern. The glass was broken but the
candle was still there.

Once I was
safely at the other end of the walkway, I lit the stub, which was still warm.
It took me several minutes because my hands were shaking so much, and I wasted
two more matches, including the last one.

When the candle
was alight, I called out, ‘Sir? Sir? Can you hear me?’ I knew it was stupid but
I did it all the same. ‘Sir? Are you all right?’

‘He won’t
hear,’ Faraday said. ‘He can’t hear.’

I looked back
at him. He was still sitting on the bottom step.

‘Come across,’
I said.

‘I can’t. I’ll
fall. My legs are shaking. My head hurts.’

‘You’ve got to.
Come on, Rabbit. I’ll come over and fetch you.’

‘No,’ he said.
‘I won’t. I won’t let you. You’ll make me fall.’

‘Don’t be
stupid.’

‘You can’t make
me.’

I didn’t want
to leave Faraday behind, for my sake as much as his. But I had to find out what
had happened to Mr Ratcliffe. I had to fetch help.

I went down the
spiral staircase. It was relatively easy going after what had gone before, for
the steps were wide and shallow. I forced myself not to hurry.

At the bottom,
I cupped the flame with my free hand and moved slowly towards the west door. Mr
Ratcliffe lay, a darker shadow than the rest, about a yard away from it. He was
on his back. The overcoat had spread around him like a pair of black wings.

I put the
candle carefully on the ground beside him. ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘Sir — please wake
up.’

I knew he was
dead. I had known all along. But I touched him. It seemed important to do that,
a sign of respect, of sorrow. I felt the stubble on his cheek. I tried to put
his overcoat over him: to keep him warm, perhaps, or to make him decent.

I looked up,
into the darkness. ‘Faraday? Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going for
help. Just stay where you are.’

I picked up the
lantern. There was a savage draught by the door and the candle had no glass to
protect it. The flame died as if a pair of fingers had snuffed it.

‘I say...’
Faraday’s voice drifted down to me. ‘I can hear it again. The music.’

I have no idea how long it took me to
escape from the Cathedral. I wandered in the dark, in the belly of the stone
beast. More by luck than good judgement I found the south nave aisle. I knew I
was there because I could feel the shape of the memorial tablets that lined its
wall.

From then it
was simply a matter of working my way up to the choir vestry. I went through
the vestry and tugged open the door to the south porch.

There was a
little light here, for one of the College lampposts was fifty yards away on the
road to the Porta. I walked through the porch. I glanced to my left. Trails of
ragged footprints marched across the grass. That was how Mr Ratcliffe had known
we were in the Cathedral.

Something
touched my leg below the knee.

I looked down.
A cat walked briskly but without haste through the archway of the porch and
slipped through the bars of the gate leading to the Deanery garden.

Was it Mordred?
It seems far-fetched to think it might have been. But cats are strange animals,
and he was a stranger cat than most. I remember that touch on my ankle as we
were climbing the first staircase of the tower.

I fled through
the College to the Veals’ house. I have a vivid memory of hammering on their
door, of screaming and crying, until Mr Veal came down in his dressing gown,
carrying a poker.

Later I
remember hot, sweet tea in the kitchen. Mr Veal wasn’t there then — I suppose
he must have gone to the Cathedral. But Mrs Veal bustled about in a dressing
gown, with a cap on her head. It was she who saw that my hands were bloody, and
so was the sleeve of my coat.

But that can’t
be right, I thought. My hands can’t be bloody now. They were bloody before
this, after the ratting at Angel Farm.

I think the
doctor came. I think I was given a sleeping draught and put to bed in a little
room beside the Veals’ bedroom.

There’s not
much more to tell. I spent the next few days at the Veals’ house. I slept and
ate a great deal. I answered questions, often the same ones, over and over
again. The Veals asked the questions first. Then the headmaster, a remote
figure who had never condescended to speak to me before, then the doctor again.
Then two police officers, one after the other, and a man in a suit with a gold
watch chain, who I think was perhaps a solicitor.

I didn’t ask
about Faraday but the headmaster told me anyway. Mr Veal had brought him down
from the tower. He was running a high fever and he had been taken to the
cottage hospital.

His illness, I
heard later, was diagnosed as brain fever, a convenient term in those days that
covered a multitude of conditions. I don’t know what a doctor would have called
it now. Faraday recovered, I heard later, and his guardian sent him abroad to
convalesce in one of the German spa towns.

My aunt was
still in hospital herself, though she was well enough to return home by the
middle of January. There must have been frenzied discussions about what on
earth to do with me in the meantime. In the end the school persuaded the vicar
of my aunt’s village to take me in until she was able to cope with me again.