Sacrament

‘I should go back,’ Frannie said.

‘I’m not stopping you,’ Will replied.

Frannie didn’t move. He glanced round at her, and saw such hurt in her eyes he had to look away. Seeking some other point of interest, his gaze found the one visible building close to the right-hand track, and more to mellow his cruelty than out of genuine curiosity he asked Frannie what it was.

‘Everybody calls it the Courthouse,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t really. It was built by this man who wanted to protect horses or something. I don’t know the proper story.’

‘Who lives there?’ Will said. As far as he could tell at this distance, it was an impressive-looking structure; it almost looked like a temple in one of his history books, except that it was built of dark stone.

‘Nobody lives there,’ Frannie said. ‘It’s horrible inside.’

‘You went in?’

‘Sherwood hid there once. He knows more about it than I do. You should ask him.’

Will wrinkled up his nose. ‘Nah,’ he said, feeling as though he’d made his attempt at conciliation and he could now depart without guilt.

‘Fraaannnie!’ Sherwood was yelling again. He had clambered up onto the wall of the bridge and was imitating a trapeze artist as he walked along it.

‘Get down off there!’ Frannie shouted at him and, saying goodbye to Will over her shoulder, hurried back to the bridge to enforce her edict.

Relieved to have the girl gone, Will again considered the routes before him. If he went back to the house now he could slake his thirst and fill the growing hole in his belly. But he’d also have to endure the atmosphere of ill-humour that hung about the place. Better to go walking, he thought; find out what was around the bend and beyond the hedgerows.

He glanced back at the bridge to see that Frannie had coaxed Sherwood down off the wall and that he was now sitting on the ground again, hugging his knees, while his sister stood gazing in Will’s direction. He gave her a halfhearted wave, and then struck out along the unexplored road, thinking as he went that perhaps the route would be so tantalizing that he’d make good on his boast to the girl, and keep walking till Burnt Yarley was just a memory.

IV

The Courthouse was further than he’d thought. He walked and walked, and every turn in the road showed him another turn and every hedgerow he peered over another hedgerow, until it dawned on him that he’d completely miscalculated the size of the building. It was not near and small, it was far and enormous. By the time he came abreast of it, and surveyed the hedge looking for a way into the field in which it stood, fully half an hour had passed. The day had grown more uncomfortable than ever, and there were heavy clouds louring over the fells to the northeast. Adele Bottrall’s cleansing storm, at last, its billowing thunderheads casting shadows on the heights. Perhaps it would be better to leave this adventuring for another day, he thought. The sting on his neck had begun to pain him afresh, and had passed its throb to the bones of his head. It was time to go home, whatever he’d boasted.

But to have come so far and not have anything to tell was surely a waste. Five more minutes he’d be through the hedge and across the field, into the mystery building. Another five and he’d have seen its dank interior, and he could be away, taking a short cut across the fields, content that his trudge had not been in vain.

So thinking he scouted for a gap in the woven hawthorn and, finding a place where the branches looked less tightly meshed, pushed through. He didn’t emerge entirely unscathed, but the spectacle on the other side was worth the scratches. The grass in the meadow surrounding the Courthouse was almost up to his chest, and there was life in it everywhere. Peewits erupted from underfoot, hares he could hear but not see raced away at his approach. He instantly forgot his aching head, and strode through the hay and cow parsley like a man lost on safari, his stomach suddenly churning with excitement. Perhaps, after all, this wouldn’t be such a bad place to live: away from the dirty streets and the taxis, in a place where he could be somebody else; somebody new.

He was just a few yards from the Courthouse now, and any doubts he’d entertained about the wisdom of venturing inside had fled. He climbed the overgrown steps, passed between the pillars (which had the girth of Donald Bottrall) and pushing open the half-rotted door, stepped inside.

It was colder than he had expected it to be; and darker. Though there had been so little rain that the river had been reduced to a trickle, there was nevertheless a dankness everywhere, as though somehow the building was drawing moisture up from the earth below, and with it came the smell of rot and worms.

The room he’d entered was most peculiar: a kind of semi-circular vestibule, with a number of alcoves carved into it that looked as though they might have been intended for statues. On the floor was an elaborate mosaic, depicting a curious collection of objects, some of which Will recognized, others which he did not. There were grapes and lemons, flowers and cloves of garlic; there was what might have been a piece of meat, except that it had maggots crawling out of it and he thought that must be his mistake, because nobody in their right mind would go to the trouble of building a magnificent place like this and then put a picture of a rotted steak on the floor. He didn’t linger to puzzle over it for long. A call of distant thunder so deep it reverberated in the walls reminded him of the coming storm. He needed to be out of here in a couple of minutes if he was to have a hope of outrunning the rain. He headed on, into the belly of the building, down a wide, high-ceilinged corridor (it was almost as though the doors and passageways had been designed to let giants pass) and through another door, this less vaulted than the first, into the central chamber.

As he entered there was a clattering in the shadows ahead of him, so loud his heart jumped in his chest. He threw himself back towards the door, and would have been away through it – his adventurous spirit quenched – had he not moments later heard the pitiful bleat of a sheep. He studied the chamber. It had a round skylight in the middle of its domed roof, and a beam came down to strike the filthy ground, like a single bright pillar designed to hold the whole magnificence in place. There was a wash of light up upon the tiers of stone seats which ran round the entire chamber, bright enough to touch the walls themselves. Here, he saw, there were carvings, depicting who knew what? Sporting events, perhaps; he saw horses in one of them, and dogs in another, straining on long leashes.

The bleating came again, and following the sound Will set eyes on a pitiable sight. A fully grown sheep – its body pitifully thinned by malnutrition, its fleece hanging off it in filthy rags – was cowering in a niche between two tiers of seats where it had retreated upon Will’s entrance.

‘You’re a mess,’ he said to the animal. Then, more softly: ‘It’s okay…I’m not going to hurt you.’ He started to approach. The sheep regarded him balefully with its bulbous eyes, but it didn’t move. ‘You got stuck in here, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘You big dafty. You found your way in and now you can’t get out again.’

The closer he got to the creature, the more pathetic its condition appeared. Its legs and head and flanks were covered in scrapes, where it had presumably attempted to push its way out. There was one particularly befouled wound along the side of its jaw where flies were busy.

Will had no intention of actually touching the animal. But if he could just scare it in the right direction, he thought, he might get it out into the light where at least it had a chance of finding its way home. The theory had merit. When he climbed up onto one of the tiers of seats, the poor creature, frightened out of its simple wits, fled its bolt-hole in an instant, its hooves clattering on the stone floor. He pursued it to the door, and overtook it. Terrified, the animal reeled around, bleating pitifully. Will put his shoulder against the door, and pushed it open. The sheep had retreated to the pool of light in the centre of the chamber, and stood watching Will with its flanks heaving. Will glanced down the passageway to the front door, which was still as he had left it, open wide. Surely the animal could see that far? The sun was still shining out there; the grass swayed in a rising wind, as pliant and seductive as this place was severe.

‘Go on!’ Will said. ‘Look! Food!’

The sheep just stared at him, bug-eyed. Will glanced back along the passageway, and saw that here and there the wall had crumbled and blocks of stone slipped from their place. He let the door go, found a block that he had the strength to move, and rolling it ahead of him, used it to wedge the door open. Then he went back into the chamber and, scooting around behind the sheep, shoved it towards the open door. Finally its undernourished brain got the message. It was off down the passageway and out through the front door to freedom.

Will was pleased with himself. It wasn’t quite the adventure he’d expected to have in this bizarre place, but it had satisfied some instinct in him. ‘Perhaps I’ll be a farmer,’ he said to himself. Then he headed out, into whatever was left of the day.

V

The episode with the sheep had delayed him in the Courthouse longer than he’d intended; even as he stepped outside the clouds covered the sun, and a gust of wind, strong enough to bow the grass low as it passed, brought a spatter of rain. He would not now be able to outrun a soaking, he knew, but he was determined not to go back the way he’d come. Instead he’d take a short cut across the fields to the house. He walked to the comer of the Courthouse, and tried to spot his destination, but it was out of sight. He knew its general direction, however; he would simply follow his nose.

The rain was getting heavier by the moment, but he didn’t mind. The air carried the metallic tang of lightning, sweetened by the scent of wet grass; the heat was already noticeably mellowed. On the fells ahead of him, a few last spears of sunlight were shining through the big-bellied clouds and stabbing the heights.

Just as the storm was filling the valley, so it seemed his senses were filled: with the rain, the grass, the tang, the sunlight and thunder. He could not remember ever feeling as he felt now: that he and the world around him were in every particular connected. It made him want to yell with happiness, he felt so full, so found. It was as though, for the first time in his life, something in the world that was not human knew he was there.

His blessedness made him fleet. Whooping and shouting he ran through the lashing grass like a crazy, while the clouds sealed off the last of the sun and threw lightning down on the hills.

He did his best to hold to the direction he’d set himself, but the rain quickly escalated from a bracing shower to a downpour, and he could soon no longer see slopes that minutes before had been crystalline, so obscured were they by veils of water and cloud. Nor was this his only problem. The first hedgerow he encountered was too thick to be breached and too tall to be clambered over, so he was obliged to go looking for a gate, his trek along the edge of the field disorienting him. It was some time before he found a means of egress: not a gate but a stile, which he hoisted himself over, glancing back at the Courthouse only to find that it too had disappeared from sight.

He didn’t panic. There were farmhouses scattered all along the valley, and if he did find himself lost then he’d just strike out for the nearest residence and ask for directions. Meanwhile he made an instinctive guess at his route, and ploughed on first through a meadow of rape and then across a field occupied by a herd of cows, several of which had taken refuge under an enormous sycamore. He was almost tempted to join them, but he’d read once that trees were bad spots to shelter during thunderstorms so on he went, through a gate onto a track that was turning into a little brook, and over a second stile into a muddy, deserted field. The rainfall had not slowed a jot, and by now he was soaked to the skin. It was time, he decided, to seek some help. The next track he came to he’d follow till it led him somewhere inhabited; maybe he’d persuade a sympathetic soul to drive him home.

But he walked on for another ten or fifteen minutes without encountering a track, however rudimentary, and now the ground began to slope upwards, so that he was soon having to climb hard. He stopped. This was definitely not the right way. Half-blinded by the freezing downpour he turned three hundred and sixty degrees looking for some clue to his whereabouts, but there were walls of grey rain enclosing him on every side, so he turned his back to the slope and retraced his steps. At least that was what he thought he’d done. Somehow he’d managed to turn himself around, without realizing he’d done so, because after fifty yards the ground again steepened beneath his feet – cascades of water surging over boulders a little way up the slope. The cold and disorientation were bad enough, but what now began to trouble him more was a subtle darkening of the sky. It was not the thunderclouds that were blotting out the light, it was dusk. In a few minutes it would be dark; far darker than it ever got on the streets of Manchester.

He was shivering violently, and his teeth had begun to chatter. His legs were aching, and his rain-pummelled face was numb. He tried yelling for help, but he rapidly gave up in the attempt. Between the din of the storm and the frailty of his voice, he knew after a few yells it was a lost cause. He had to preserve his energies, such as they were. Wait until the storm cleared, when he could work out where he was. It wouldn’t be difficult, once the lights of the village started to reappear, as they surely would, sooner or later.

And then, a shout, somewhere in the storm, and something broke cover, racing in front of him—

‘Catch it!’ he heard a raw voice say, and instinctively threw himself down to catch hold of whatever was escaping. His quarry was even more exhausted and disoriented than he, apparently, because his hands caught hold of something lean and furry, which squealed and struggled in his grip.

‘Hold it, m’lad! Hold it!’

The speaker now appeared from higher up the slope. It was a woman, dressed entirely in black, carrying a flickering lamp, which burned with a fat yellow-white flame. By its light he saw a face that was more beautiful than any he had seen in his life, its pale perfection framed by a mass of dark red hair.

‘You are a treasure,’ she said to Will, setting down the lamp. Her accent was not local, but tinged with a little Cockney. ‘You just hold that damn hare a minute longer, while I get my bag.’

She set down the lamp, rummaged in the folds of her sleek coat and pulled out a small sack. Then she approached Will and with lightning speed clawed the squealing hare from his arms. It was in the bag and the bag sealed up in moments. ‘You’re as good as gold, you are,’ she said. ‘We would have gone hungry, Mr Steep and me, if you hadn’t been so quick.’ She set down the bag. ‘Oh my Lord, look at the state of you,’ she said, bending to examine Will more closely. ‘What’s your name?’

‘William.’

‘I had a William once,’ the woman remarked. ‘It’s a lovely name.’ Her face was close to Will’s, and there was a welcome heat in her breath. ‘In fact I think I had two. Sweet children, both of ‘em.’ She reached out and touched Will’s cheek. ‘Oh but you are cold.’

‘I got lost.’

That’s terrible. Terrible,’ she said, stroking his face. ‘How could any self-respecting mother let you stray out of sight? She should be ashamed, she should. Ashamed.’ Will would have concurred, but the warmth seeping from the woman’s fingers into his face was curiously soporific.

‘Rosa?’ somebody said.

‘Yes?’ the woman replied, her voice suddenly flirty. ‘I’m down here, Jacob.’

‘Who’ve you found now?’

‘I was just thanking this lad,’ Rosa said, removing her hand from Will’s face. He was suddenly freezing again. ‘He caught us our dinner.’

‘Did he indeed?’ said Jacob. ‘Why don’t you step aside, Mrs McGee, and give me sight of the boy?’

‘Sight you want, sight you’ll have,’ Rosa replied, and getting to her feet she picked up the sack, and moved a short way down the slope.

In the two or three minutes since Will had caught hold of the hare, the sky had darkened considerably, and when Will looked in the direction of Jacob Steep it was hard to see the man clearly. He was tall, that much was clear, and was wearing a long coat with shiny buttons. His face was bearded, and his hair longer than Mrs McGee’s. But his features were a blur to Will’s weary eyes.

‘You should be at home,’ he said. Will shuddered, but this time the cause was not the cold but the warmth of Steep’s voice. ‘A boy like you, out here alone, could come to some harm or other.’

‘He’s lost,’ Mrs McGee chimed in.

‘On a night like this, we’re all a little lost,’ Mr Steep said. There’s no blame there.’

‘Maybe he should come home with us,’ Rosa suggested. ‘You could light one of your fires for him.’

‘Hush yourself,’ Jacob snapped. ‘I will not have talk of fires when this boy is so bitter cold. Where are your wits?’

‘As you like,’ the woman replied. ‘It’s no matter to me either way. But you should have seen him take the hare. He was on it like a tiger, he was.’

‘I was lucky,’ Will said, ‘that’s all.’

Mr Steep drew a deep breath, and to Will’s great delight descended the slope a yard or two more. ‘Can you get up?’ he asked Will.

‘Of course I can,’ Will replied, and did so.

Though Mr Steep had halved the distance between them, the darkness had deepened a little further, and his features were just as hard to fathom. ‘I wonder, looking at you, if we weren’t meant to meet on this hill,’ he said softly. ‘I wonder if that’s the luck of this night, for us all.’ Will was still trying hard to get a better sense of what Steep looked like; to put a face to the voice that moved him so deeply, but his eyes weren’t equal to the challenge. The hare, Mrs McGee.’

‘What about it?’

‘We should set it free.’

‘After the chase it led me?’ Rosa replied. ‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘We owe it that much, for leading us to Will.’

‘I’ll thank it as I skin it, Jacob, and that’s my final word on the thing. My God, you’re impractical. Throwing away good food. I’ll not have it.’ Before Steep could protest further she snatched up the sack, and was away down the slope.

Only now, watching her descend, did Will realize that the worst of the storm had blown over. The rainfall had mellowed to a drizzle, the murk was melting away; he could even see lights glimmering in the valley. He was relieved, certainly, but not as much as he thought he’d be. There was comfort in the prospect of returning home, but that meant leaving the company of the dark man at his back, who even now lay a heavy, leather-gloved hand upon his shoulder.

‘Can you see your house from here?’ he asked Will.

‘No…not yet.’

‘But it will come clear, by and by.’

‘Yes,’ Will said, only now getting a sense of how the land lay. He had managed somehow to come halfway around the valley during his blind trek, and was looking down on the village from a wholly unexpected angle. There was a track not more than thirty yards down the ridge from where he stood; it would lead him, he suspected, back to the route he’d followed to get to the Courthouse. A left at that intersection would bring him back into Burnt Yarley, and then it was just a weary trudge home.

‘You should go, my boy,’ Jacob said. ‘Doubtless a fellow as fine as you has loving guardians.’ The gloved hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘I envy you that, having no parents that I can remember.’

‘I’m…sorry,’ Will said, hesitating because he was by no means sure a man as fine as Jacob Steep was ever in need of sympathy. He received it, however, in good part.

Thank you, Will. It’s important that a man be compassionate. It’s a quality that our sex so often neglects, I think.’ Will heard the soft cadence of Steep’s breathing, and tried to fall in rhythm with it. ‘You should go,’ Jacob said. ‘Your parents will be concerned for you.’

‘No they won’t,’ Will replied.

‘Surely—’

‘They won’t. They don’t care.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘It’s true.’

Then you must be a loving son in spite of them,’ Steep said. ‘Be grateful that you have their faces in your mind’s eye. And their voices to answer when you call. Better that than emptiness, believe me. Better than silence.’

He lifted his hand from Will’s shoulder, and instead touched the middle of his back, gently pushing him away. ‘Go on,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll be dead of cold if you don’t go soon. Then how would we get to meet again?’

Will’s spirits rose at this. ‘We might do that?’

‘Oh certainly, if you’re hardy enough to come and find me. But Will…understand me…I’m not looking for a dog to perch on my lap. I need a wolf.’

‘I could be a wolf,’ Will said. He wanted to look back over his shoulder at Steep, but that was not, he thought, the most appropriate thing for an aspirant wolf to do.

Then as I say: come find me,’ Steep said. ‘I won’t be far away.’ And with that he gave Will a final nudge, setting him off on his way down the slope.

Will did not look back until he reached the track, and when he did he saw nothing. At least nothing alive. The hill he saw, black against the clearing sky. And the stars, appearing between the clouds. But their splendour was nothing compared to the face of Jacob Steep; a face he had not yet seen, but which his mind had already conjured a hundred different ways by the time he reached home, each finer than the one before. Steep the nobleman, fine-boned and fancy; Steep the soldier, scarred from a dozen wars; Steep the magician, his gaze bearing power. Perhaps he was all of these. Perhaps none. Will didn’t care. What mattered was to be beside him again, soon, and know him better.

Meanwhile, there was a warm light from the window of his home, and a fire in the hearth. Even a wolf might seek the comfort of the hearth now and then, Will reasoned, and knocking on the front door, was let back in.

VI

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 said 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.