Sacrament (16 page)

Whether this question was meant for his occupant or the corpse before them, Will did not dare enquire. He'd
dragged Jacob to revisit this appalling vision against the man's wishes, and now he felt shame at what he'd done.
Sickened too. Not at the sight of the body. That didn't bother him particularly; it was no more horrible than the
meat hanging up in a butcher's window. What made him want to look away was the thought that this thing
before him was probably the way Nathaniel had looked, give or take a wound. Will had always imagined
Nathaniel somehow perfected in death; his injuries erased by kindly hands, so that his mother could remember
him immaculate. Now he knew differently. Nathaniel had been thrown through a shoe-shop window. There was
no concealing wounds so deep. No wonder Eleanor had wept for months and locked herself away; no wonder
she'd taken to eating pills instead of bread and eggs. He hadn't understood how terrible it must have been for
her, sitting beside Nathaniel's bed, while he slipped away. But he understood now. And understanding, he
blushed with shame at his cruelty.

He'd had enough. It was time to do as Steep had wanted all along, and look away. But now the shoe was on
the other foot, and Steep knew it.

Do you want to take a closer look? Will heard him say, and the next moment Steep was going down on his
haunches beside Thomas's corpse, scrutinizing it wound by wound. It was Will who flinched now, his

curiosity more than sated. But Jacob would not give him release. Look at him, Steep murmured, his gaze going
to Thomas' mutilated groin. That fox made a meal of him, eh? There was a phony jocularity in Steep's tone. He
felt this as deeply as Will; perhaps more so. Serves him right. He should have got some pleasure from his prick
while he still had it to wave around. Poor, pathetic Thomas. Rosa tried to seduce him more than once but he
could never get it up. I told him: if you don't want Rosa, who has everything a man could want in a woman,
then you can't want a woman at all. You're a sodomite, Thom. He said I was too simple.

Steep leaned over and peered more closely at the wound. The fox's needle teeth had done a neat job. If not for
the blood and a few remnants of tissue, the man could have been born unsexed. 'Well, you look like the simple
one now, Thomas,' Steep said, taking his gaze from gelded groin to blinded head.

There was another colour here, which Will had not noticed until now. On the inner surfaces of the painter's lips,
and on his teeth and tongue, a bluish tinge.

'You poisoned yourself, didn't you?' Steep said. He leaned closer to Thomas's face. 'Why did you do a damn
fool thing like that? Not because of Rukenau, surely. I would have protected you from him. Didn't I promise?'
He reached out and brushed the back of his fingers across the man's cheek, the way he had as they parted the
day before. 'Didn't I tell you you'd be safe with Rosa and me? Oh Lord, Thom. I would not have seen you
suffer.' He leaned back from the body, and in a louder voice than he'd used hitherto, as though making a formal
declaration, said, 'Rukenau's to blame. You gave him your genius; he paid you in lunacy. That makes him a
thief, at very least. I won't serve him after this. And I will never forgive him. He can stay in his wretched house
forever, but he won't have me for company. Nor Rosa, either.' He got to his feet. 'Goodbye, Thom,' he said,
more softly. 'You would have liked the island.' Then he turned his back on the body, the way he'd turned his
back on the living man the day before, and strode away.

As he did so, the scene began to flicker out, the pattering rain, the roses and the body that lay under both,
dimming in a heartbeat. But as they went, Will caught a glimpse of the fox, standing at the limit of the trees,
gazing back at him. A shaft of sun had pierced the rain clouds and found the animal, etching its lean flanks and
keen head and flickering brush in gold. In the instant before his vision fled, Will met the beast's unblinking
stare. There was nothing contrite in its look, no shame that it had fed on pudenda today. I'm a beast, its stare
seemed to say, don't you dare judge me.

Then they were both gone - the fox and the sun that blessed it - and Will was back in the dark copse above
Burnt Yarley. In front of him stood Jacob, his hand still caught in Will's grip.

'Had enough?' Steep said.

By way of reply, Will simply let go of the man's hand. Yes, it was enough. More than enough. He looked all
around him, to be certain nothing of what he'd witnessed had lingered, reassured by what he saw. The trees were
once again leafless, the ground frosted; and the only corpses upon it two birds, one broken, one stabbed. In fact,
he was by no means certain that this was even the same wood.

'Did it ... happen here?' he asked, looking back at Jacob.

The man's tear-stained face was slack, his eyes glazed. It took a few moments for him to focus his attention
upon the question. 'No,' he said, finally. 'Simeon lived in Oxfordshire that year-'

'Who's Simeon?'

'Thomas Simeon, the man you just met.'

Will tried the name for himself, 'Thomas Simeon...'

'It was the July of 1730. He was twenty-three years old. He poisoned himself with his pigments, which he
mixed himself. Arsenic and sky-blue.'

'If it happened in some other place,' Will said, 'why did you remember it?'

'Because of you,' Jacob replied, softly. 'You brought him to mind, in more ways than one.' He looked away from
Will, out through the trees towards the valley. 'I'd known him since he was about your age. He was like my own
to me. Too gentle for this world of illusions. It made him mad, trying to find his way through this profligate
Creation.' He glanced back at Will, his eyes as sharp as his blade. 'God's a coward and show-off, Will. You will
come to understand this, as the years go by. He hides behind a gaudy show of forms, boasting how fine His
workings are. But Thomas had it right. Even in his wretched state, he was wiser than God.' Jacob raised his
hand palm up in front of his face, his little finger extended. The significance of the gesture was perfectly clear.
All that was missing was the petal. 'If the world were a simpler place, we would not be lost in it,' he said. 'We
wouldn't be greedy for novelty. We wouldn't always want something new, always something new! We'd live the
way Thomas wanted to live, in awe of the mysteries of a petal.' Even as he spoke, Steep seemed to hear the
yearning in his own voice, and turned it to ice. 'Yon made a mistake, boy,' he said, his hand closing into a fist.
'You drank where it wasn't wise to drink. My memories are in your head now. So's Thomas. And the fox. And
the madness.'

Will didn't like the sound of this at all. 'What madness?' he said.

'You can't see all that you've seen, you can't know what we now both know, without something souring.' He put
his thumb to the middle of his skull. 'You've supped from here, wunderkind, and neither of us can ever be the
same. Don't look so frightened. You were brave enough to come with me this far-'

'But only because you were with me-'

'What makes you think we can ever be apart after this?'

'You mean we can still go away together?'

'No, that won't be possible. I'll have to keep you at a distance - a great distance - for both our sakes.'
'But you just said-'

'That we'd never be apart. Nor will we. But that doesn't mean you'll be at my side. There would be too much
pain for both of us, and I don't wish that for you any more than you wish it for me.'

He was talking the way he would to an adult, Will knew, and it soothed a little of the disappointment. This
talk of pain between them, of places where Jacob didn't want to look: this was the vocabulary one man would
use talking to another. He would diminish himself in Jacob's eyes if he answered like a petulant child. And what
was the use? Plainly, Jacob wasn't going to change his mind.

'So ... where will you go now?' Will said, attempting to be casual.
'I'll go about my work.'

'And what's that?' Will said. Jacob had spoken of his work several times, but he'd never been specific about it.
'You already know more than's best for either of us,' Jacob replied.
'I can keep a secret.'

'Then keep what you know,' Jacob said. 'There-' he put his fist to his chest '-where only you can touch it.'
Will made a fist of his numb fingers and echoed Jacob's gesture. It earned him a wan smile.
'Good,' he said. 'Good. Now ... go home.'

Those were the words Will had hoped so hard not to hear. Hearing them now, he felt tears pricking his eyes.
But he told himself he wasn't to cry - not here, not now - and they receded. Perhaps Jacob saw the effort he'd
made, because his face, which had been stern, softened.

'Maybe we'll find each other again, somewhere down the road.'

'You think so?'

'It's possible,' he said. 'Now, go off home. Leave me to meditate on what I've lost.' He sighed. 'First the book.
Then Rosa. Now you.' He raised his voice a little. 'I said go!'

'You lost a book?' Will said. 'Sherwood's got it.' Will waited, daring to hope the information might give him a
reprieve. Another hour in Jacob's company, at least.

'Are you sure?'

'I'm sure!' Will said. 'Don't worry, I'll go get it from him. I know where he lives. It'll be easy.'

'Now don't be lying to me,' Jacob warned.

'I wouldn't do that,' Will said, offended at the accusation, 'I swear.'

Jacob nodded. 'I believe you,' he said. 'You would be of great service to me if you put the book back in my
hand.'

Will grinned. 'That's all I want to do. I want to be of service.'

i

There was no magic in the descent: no sense of anticipation, no strengthening hand laid on Will's nape to help
him negotiate the snow-slickened rocks. Jacob had done all the touching he intended to do. Will was left to fend
for himself, which meant that he fell repeatedly. Twice he slithered several yards on his rump, bruising and
scraping himself on buried boulders as he tried to bring his careening to a halt. It was a cold, painful and
humiliating journey. He longed for it to be over quickly.

Halfway down the hill, however, his misery was made complete by the reappearance of Rosa McGee. She
appeared out of the murk calling for Jacob, sufficient alarm in her voice that he told Will to wait while he spoke
to her. Rosa was plainly agitated. Though Will could hear nothing of the exchange, he saw Jacob lay a
reassuring hand on her, nodding and listening, then replying with his head close to hers. After perhaps a minute,
he returned to Will and told him: 'Row's had a little trouble. We're going to have to be careful.'

'Why?'

'Don't ask questions,' Jacob replied, 'just take my word for it. Now-' he pointed down the hill '-we have to hurry.'

Will did as he was told, and headed on down the slope. He cast one backward glance at Rosa, and saw that she'd
squatted down on a flattopped rock, from which she seemed to be staring back towards the Courthouse. Had she
been ousted, he wondered? Was that what all her distress was about? He would probably never know. More
weary and dispirited by the stride, he continued his descent.

There was, he saw, a good deal of activity in the streets of the village: several cars with their headlamps blazing;
people gathered in groups here and there. The doors of many of the houses stood open, and people were
standing on the steps in their nightclothes, watching events.

'What's going on?' Will wondered aloud.

'Nothing we need concern ourselves with,' Jacob replied.

'They're not looking for me, are they?'

'No, they're not,' Jacob said.

'It's her, isn't it?' Will said, the mystery of Rosa's distress suddenly solved. 'They're after Rosa.'

'Yes, I'm afraid they are,' Jacob replied. 'She's got herself in some trouble. But she's perfectly capable of looking
after herself. Why don't we just stop for a moment and examine our options?' Will duly stopped, and Jacob
descended the slope a stride or two, until they stood just a couple of yards apart. It was the closest he'd been to
Will since the wood. 'Can you see where your friends live from here?'

'Yes.'

'Point it out to me, will you?'

'You see past where the police car's parked, there's a bend in the road?'

'I see.'

'There's a street just round the bend, going left?'

'I see that, too.'

'That's Samson Road,' Will said. 'They live in the house with the junkyard beside it.'

Jacob was silent for a few seconds while he studied the lay of the land.

'I can get the book for you,' Will reminded him, just in case he was thinking of going on alone.

'I know,' Jacob said. 'I'm relying on you. But I don't think it'd be very wise for us to just walk through the
middle of the village right now.'

'We can go around the back,' Will said. He pointed out a route that would take them another half-hour to
complete but would keep them out of the way of witnesses.

'It seems the wisest option,' Jacob said. He teased off his right-hand glove, and reached into his coat to take out
his knife. 'Don't worry,' he said, catching Will's anxious glance, 'I won't taint it with human blood unless it's
strictly necessary.'

Will shuddered. An hour ago, climbing the hill with Jacob, he'd felt happier than he'd felt in his life before; the
feel of that blade had made his palm tremble with pleasure, and the little deaths he'd caused filled him with
pride. Now all that seemed like another world, another Will. He looked down at his hands. He'd never finished
scrubbing them clean, and even in the murk he could see that they were still stained with the bird's blood. He
felt a spasm of self-disgust. If he could have fled then and there, he might well have done so. But that would
have left Jacob searching for the book on his own, and Will didn't dare risk that. Not while Steep was carrying
that knife of his. Will knew from experience how self-possessed it could be; how eager to do harm.

Turning his back on man and knife, he resumed his descent, no longer leading directly into the village but
around it, so as to bring them undiscovered to the Cunninghams' doorstep.

ii

When Frannie woke, the clock beside the bed said five twenty-five. She got up anyway, knowing her father,
who had always been an early riser, would also be up in the next fifteen minutes.

In fact, she found him in the kitchen, already fully dressed, pouring himself a cup of tea and smoking a
cigarette. He gave her a grim little smile of welcome. 'Something's going on out there,' he said, spooning sugar
into his tea. 'I'm going out to see what's happening.'

'Have some toast first,' she said. She didn't wait for a reply. She took a loaf out of the bread-bin, then went to
the drawer, for the breadknife; then to the cooker, to turn on the grill, and back to slice the bread; and all the
time, toing and froing, she was thinking how strange it was to be pretending that there was nothing really
different about the world this morning, when she knew in her heart that this wasn't so.

It was her father who finally spoke, his back to her as he gazed out of the kitchen window. 'I don't know,' he
said. 'Things going on these days ...' he shook his head '... used to be safe for folks.'

Frannie had slid two slices of the thickly cut bread beneath the grill, and fetching her favourite mug out of the
cupboard, poured herself some tea. Like her dad, she sugared it heavily. They were the two sweet tooths in the
family.

'It makes me scared for you, sometimes,' her father said, turning back to look at Frannie, 'the way the world's
going.'

'I'll be all right, Dad,' she said.

'I know you will,' he said, though his expression belied his words. 'We'll all be fine.' He opened his arms to her,
and she went to him, hugging him hard. 'Only you'll see as you get older,' he said, 'there's more bad out there
than good. That's why you work hard to make a safe place for the people you love. Somewhere you can lock the
door.' He rocked her in his embrace. 'You're my princess, you know that?'

'I know,' she said, smiling up at him.

A police car roared past, siren blaring. The happiness faded from George Cunningham's face.

'I'll butter us some toast,' Frannie said, patting his chest. 'That'll make us feel better.' She pulled the slices out
from under the grill and flipped them over. 'You want some marmalade?'

'No thanks,' he said, watching her as she fussed around: to the fridge for some butter, then back to the cooker,
where she picked up the hot toast and put it on a plate. Then she slathered on the butter, the way she knew he
liked it.

'There,' she said, presenting him with the toast. He wolfed it down, murmuring his approval.

All she needed now was milk for her tea. The carton was empty, but the milkman could have arrived by now, so
she padded through to the front door to fetch the delivery.
The front door had been bolted top and bottom, which was unusual. Plainly her parents had gone to bed
nervous. Frannie reached up and unbolted the top, then stooping to unbolt the bottom, opened the door.
There was still no sign of the day; not a glimmer. It was going to be one of those winter days when light
barely seemed to touch the world before it was gone again. The snow had stopped falling, however, and the
street looked like a well-made bed in the lamplight, plump white pillows piled against walls, and quilts laid on
roofs and pavements. She found the sight comforting in its prettiness. It reminded her that Christmas would
soon be here, and there'd be reasons for songs and laughter.

The step was empty; the milk was late being delivered today. Oh well, she thought, I'll have to have tea
without.

And then, the sound of feet crunching on snow. She looked up and saw somebody had appeared at the
opposite side of the street. Whoever it was stood beyond the lamplight, but only for a few moments. Realizing
he'd been seen, he stepped out of the grey gloom and into view. It was Will.