Sacrament

  “No, really, I’m fine. I’ll just have some tea.”

  “Let me make you a couple of slices of toast, at least. You need feeding up a little bit.” Will knew what was coming. “Have you not got a lass to cook for you?”

  “I do fine on my own.”

  “Craig’s wife, Mary, is a wonderful cook, isn’t she, Craig?” The grunt, by way of reply. “You never thought of getting married? I suppose with your work an’ all, it’d be hard having a normal life.” She chatted on while she brewed the tea. She’d spoken to the hospital this morning, she said, and Hugo had passed a very comfortable night, the best so far in fact. “I thought we could both go back to see him this evening?”

  “That’s fine by me.”

  “What are you planning to do today?”

  “Oh, I’ll just have a wander down to the village.”

  “Get reacquainted,” Adele said. “Something like that.”

  ii

  When he left the house a little before ten he was in a quiet turmoil. He knew his destination of course: the Courthouse. Unless he’d missed his guess there he’d find Jacob and Rosa ensconced, waiting for him. The prospect aroused a cluster of contrary feelings. There was inevitably a measure of anxiety, even a little fear.

  Steep had brutally assaulted Hugo and was perfectly capable of doing the same, or worse, to Will. But his anxiety was countered both by anticipation and curiosity. What would it be like to confront Steep again after all these years? To be a man in his presence, not a boy, to meet him eye to eye?

  He’d had a few glimpses of how it might be, in his years of travel: men and women he’d encountered who carried with them some of the power that had attended Jacob and Rosa. A priestess in Ethiopia, who despite the plethora of religious symbols she carried about her neck, some Christian, some not, had spoken in a kind of poetic stream of consciousness that suggested she was deriving her inspiration from no readily named source. A shaman in San Lázan whom Will had watched swaying and singing before an altar heaped with marigolds, and who had given him healthy helpings of sacred mushrooms— teonanacatl, the divine flesh—to help him on his own journey. Both extraordinary presences, from whose mouths he might have imagined Steep’s grim wisdom coming.

  The day was calm and cool, the cloud layer unbroken. He ambled down to the crossroads, from which spot he’d once been able to see the Courthouse. But no longer. Trees that had been svelte thirty years before were now in spreading maturity and blocked the view with their canopies. He paused just long enough to light up another cigarette and then headed on his way.

  He had covered perhaps half the distance when he began to suspect his assumption at the crossroads had been wrong. Though the trees were indeed fuller than they’d been, and the hedgerows taller, surely by now he should have been able to see the roof of the Courthouse? He walked on, the suspicion becoming certainty the closer he came to the spot. The Courthouse had been demolished.

  He had no need to clamber through a hedgerow to get into the field that it had dominated. There was now a gate at the spot, through which, he assumed, the rubble had been removed. The field had not been returned to agricultural use however; it had been left to the vagaries of seed and season. He clambered over the gate—which to judge by its condition had not been opened in many years—and strode through the tall grass until he came to the foundation, which was still visible. Grass and wildflowers sprouted between the stones, but he was able to trace the geography of the building by walking it. Here was the passage that had led to the courtroom. Here was the place where he’d found the trapped sheep. Here was the judge’s chair, and here—oh here—was the place where Jacob had set his table—

  “Living and dying—”

  Oh God help him; God help them both—

  We feed the fire.”

  It was so long ago, and yet as he stood there, where he’d stood, it was as if he were a boy again: the languid air darkening around him as though the survival of the light depended upon the cremation of moths. Tears came into his eyes: of sorrow, for the act, and for himself, that he was still in his heart unredeemed. The grass and stone ground dissolved beneath his feet; he knew if he let himself weep he’d not be able to govern himself.

  “Don’t do this,” he said, pinching the tears from his eyes.

  He could not afford to indulge his grief today. Tomorrow, maybe, when he’d met with Steep and played out whatever grim game lay ahead, then he could take the time to be weak. But not now, in an open field, where his frailty might be witnessed.

  He looked up and scanned the hills and hedgerows. Perhaps it was too late. Perhaps Steep was watching him even now, like some carrion bird, assessing the condition of a wounded animal; waiting, as Will had waited so many times, for the moment of truth, the moment when, in tears or desperation, the subject of study revealed its final face. Searching for a title for his second collection, he had made a list of words relating to the business of death and had lived with the alternatives for a month or more, turning them over in his head so often he had them by rote. They were in his head now, coming unbidden.

  The Pale Horse and the Totentanz, Cold Meat and Crowbait, A Bed of Clay, A Last Abode, The Long Home—

  This last had been a contender for the title: describing the grave to which his subjects were about to be delivered as a place of inevitable return. It was distressing to think of that now, standing as he did within a mile of his father’s house. It made him feel like a condemned man.

  Enough of this creeping despair, he told himself. He needed relief from it, and quickly. He climbed over the gate, and without a backward glance returned along the road with the determined stride of a man who had no further business in the place behind him. He was out of cigarettes, so he made his way into the village to pick up another pack. The streets were busy, he was pleased to see. There was no little comfort to be had in the sight of people about their ordinary lives: buying vegetables, making small talk, hurrying their children along. In the newsagent’s he listened to a leisurely conversation on the subject of the Harvest Festival, the woman behind the counter (plainly the daughter of Mrs. Morris, who’d run the place in Will’s youth) opining that it was all very well trying to bring folks in to church with fancy tricks, but she drew a line at services being fun.

  “What’s the problem with a bit of fun?” her customer wanted to know.

  “I just think it’s a slippery slope,” Miss Morris replied. “We’ll have dancing in the aisles next.”

  “That’s better than sleeping in the pews,” the woman remarked with a little laugh, and picking up her chocolate bars, made her exit. The exchange had apparently been less jocular than it had seemed, because Miss Morris was quietly fuming about it when she came to serve Will.

  “Is this some big controversy?” he asked her. “The Harvest Festival, I mean?”

  “Nooo,” she said, a little exasperated at herself, “it’s just that Frannie always knows how to stir me up.”

  “Frannie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frannie Cunningham? I’ll be back for the cigarettes—” And he was out of the shop, looking right and left for the woman who’d just breezed by. She was already on the opposite side of the road, eating her chocolate as she strode on her way.

  “Frannie?” he yelled, and dodging the traffic raced to intercept her. She’d heard her name being called and was looking back toward him. It was plain from her expression she still didn’t recognize him, though now—when he saw her face full on—he knew her. She was somewhat plumper, her hair more gray than auburn. But that look of perpetual attention she’d had was still very much in place, as were her freckles.

  “Do we know each other?” she said as he gained the pavement.

  “Yes, we do,” he grinned. “Frannie, it’s me. It’s Will.”

  “Oh my Lord,” she breathed. “I didn’t . . . I mean . . . you were—”

  “In the shop. Yes. We walked straight past one another.” She opened her arms, and Will went into them,
hugging her as fiercely as she hugged him. “Will, Will, Will,” she kept saying.

  “This is so wonderful. Oh, but I’m sorry to hear about your dad.”

  “You know?”

  “Everybody knows,” she said. “You can’t keep secrets in Burnt Yarley. Well . . . I suppose that’s not quite true, is it?” She gave him an almost mischievous look. “Besides, your dad’s quite a character. Sherwood sees him at the Plow all the time, holding court. How’s he doing?”

  “Better, thank you.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And Sherwood?”

  “Oh, he has his good times and his bad times. We still have the house together. The one on Samson Street.”

  “What about your mom and dad?”

  “Dad’s dead. He died six years ago this coming November. Then last year we had to put mom into a hospice. She’s got Alzheimer’s. We looked after her at home for a couple of years, but she was deteriorating so fast. It’s horrible to watch, and Sherwood was getting in such a depression about it.”

  “It sounds like you’ve been in the wars.”

  “Oh well.” Frannie shrugged. “We battle on. Do you want to come back to the house for something to eat? Sherwood’ll be so pleased to see you.”

  “If it’s not going to be an inconvenience.”

  “You’ve been away too long,” Frannie chided him.

  “This is Yorkshire. Friends are never an inconvenience. Well,” she added, with that mischievous twinkle, “almost never.”

  V

  It was only a fifteen-minute walk back to the Cunningham house, but by the time they arrived at the gate they’d already lost any initial tentativeness and were talking in the easy manner of old friends. Will had given Frannie a quick summary of the events in Balthazar (she’d read about the accident, as she called it, in a magazine article Sherwood had found), and Frannie had prepared him for the reunion with Sherwood by filing in a little of her brother’s medical history. He’d been diagnosed with a form of acute depression, she explained, which he’d probably been suffering since childhood. Hence his seesawing emotions: his sulks, his rages, his inability to concentrate. Though he now had pills to keep it manageable, he was not, nor ever would be, entirely cured. It was a burden he would bear to the end of his life. “It helps to think of it as a test,” she said. “God wants us to show Him how tough we are.”

  “Interesting theory.”

  “I’m sure He approves of you,” she said, not entirely joking.

  “I mean, if anyone’s been through the mill, it’s you. All those terrible places you’ve had to go.”

  “It’s not quite the same if you volunteer though, is it?” Will said. “You and Sherwood haven’t had any choice.”

  “I don’t think any of us have got much choice,” she said. She dropped her voice. “Especially us. When you think of what happened . . . back then. We were children. We didn’t know what we were dealing with.”

  “Do we now?”

  She looked at him with a gaze suddenly shorn of joy. “I used to think—this probably sounds ridiculous to you—but I used to think somehow we’d met the Devil in disguise.” She laughed nervously at this. “That does sound stupid, doesn’t it?” Her laugh disappeared almost immediately, seeing that Will was not laughing with her. “Doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what he is,” he replied.

  “Was,” she said quietly.

  He shook his head. “Is,” he murmured.

  They’d reached the gate. “Oh Lord,” she said. There was a little quaver in her voice.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t come in.”

  “No, you must,” she replied. “But we shouldn’t talk about this anymore. Not in front of Sherwood. He gets upset.”

  “I understand.”

  “I think about it a lot. After all these years, I turn it over in my head. I even did a bit of research a few years ago, trying to get to the bottom of it all.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head. “I gave up,” she said. “It was bothering Sherwood, and it was churning everything up all over again. I decided it was better to leave it alone.” She unlatched the gate and started down the path, which was edged on either side by sprays of lavender, toward the front door. “Before we go in,” Will said, “can you tell me what happened to the Courthouse?”

  “It was demolished.”

  “That I saw.”

  “Marjorie Donnelly had it done. Her father was the man—”

  “Who was murdered. I remember.”

  “She had to fight tooth and nail to get it done. There was some Heritage Committee said it was of historical interest.

  Eventually she hired a dozen slaughterhouse men from Halifax, at least this is what I heard, it might not be true, but I heard they came with sledgehammers in the middle of the night and they did so much damage the place had to be leveled for safety concerns.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Don’t mention it, please.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m making Sherwood sound worse than he is,” she said, digging for her key in her purse. “Most of the time he’s fine. Just once in a while something strikes him the wrong way, and he gets so down in the dumps I think he’s never going to snap out of it.” She’d found the key, and now unlocked the door, calling for Sherwood as she stepped inside. There was no reply. Will followed her in, while she went to look for him upstairs. “He must have gone out walking,” she said, coming back downstairs. “He does that a lot.”

  They talked for the next hour or so over cold chicken, tomatoes, and homemade chutney, the conversation ranging ever more widely as it progressed. Frannie’s ebullience and sheer good nature charmed Will thoroughly. She had become an eloquent and deeply compassionate woman. More than ever, as she related her history, he sensed a regret that she’d not been able to move out of this house and find a life for herself, apart from Sherwood and his problems. But that regret was never explicit, and she would have been upset, he guessed, if she’d thought he’d recognized it in her. She was doing her Christian duty caring for Sherwood: no more nor less. If it indeed was a test, as she’d said at the gate, then she was passing it with flying colors.

  Not all the talk was of events in Burnt Yarley, however. She ferreted after the details of Will’s life and loves with no little gusto, and though he was at first reticent, her sheer persistence won him over. He gave her, in a somewhat bowdlerized version, an account of his emotional adventures, interlaced with a potted history of his career: Drew and Patrick and the Castro, books, bears and Balthazar.

  “Do you remember how you were always wanting to run away?” she said to him. “The first day we met, that’s what you said you were going to do. And you did.”

  “It took me a while.”

  “The point is, you went,” she said, eyes shining. “We’ve all got dreams when we’re kids, but most of us give up on them. But you didn’t. You went to see the world, the way you said you would.”

  “Do you get away at all?”

  “Not really. Sherwood hates to travel; it makes him nervous. We’ve been down to Oxford a couple of times, and we pop over to Skipton to see mom in the hospice, but he’s much happier when he’s here in the village.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’m happier when he’s happiest,” she said simply.

  “And you never talk about what happened?”

  “Very, very seldom. But it’s always there, isn’t it? I suppose it always will be.” She lowered her voice, as though the walls would report the conversation to Sherwood if they heard it. “I still have dreams about the Courthouse,” she said. “They’re more vivid than any other dream I have. Sometimes I’m there on my own, and I’m looking for his journal. Just going from room to room, knowing he’s coming back, and I’ve got to be quick.” The expression on his face must have been the perfect mirror of his thoughts at that moment, because she said, “It is just a dream, isn’t it?”

  “No,” he sa
id softly. “I don’t think it is.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh Lord,” she breathed.

  “It isn’t your problem,” he said. “You two can stay out of it and be perfectly—”

  “Is he here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s the reason Hugo’s in hospital. Steep beat him senseless.”

  “But why?”

  “He wanted to get a message to me. He wanted me back here, to finish what we started.”

  “He’s got his bloody journal,” Frannie said. “What more does he want?”

  “Separation,” Will said.

  “From what?”

  “From me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s hard to explain. We’re connected, him and me. I know it sounds ludicrous when we’re sitting here talking and drinking tea, but he never quite let go of me.” Then more quietly, “And maybe I never quite let go of him.”

  “Is that why you went to the Courthouse? To find him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord, Will. He could kill you.”

  “I think we’re too close for that,” he said.

  Frannie took a little time to absorb this remark. “Too close?” she said.

  “If he touches me, he may end up seeing more than he wants to see.”

  “There’s always Rosa to do the harm for him.”

  “True,” he said. This was an option he hadn’t really considered, but of course it was perfectly plausible. Rosa had proved her skills as a murderer a half mile from here; if Steep wanted to keep his distance from Will he could simply set the woman on Will’s neck and be done with him that way.

  “Rosa made quite an impression on Sherwood, you know,” Frannie went on. “He had nightmares about her for years after.

  I never got him to talk about what happened, but she made her mark.”

  “And you?” Will said.

  “What about me?”

  “I’ve had Steep. Sherwood had Rosa.”