The assault on the walls began soon after, with a ferocity that took them all aback. Mallory could hear the clattering against the gates even from outside Blaine's office, where a council had been hastily convened. When Roeser made his announcement, Mallory had seen Stefan blanch for the first time. They all knew what it meant: starvation on a mass scale within days. They were already at a low ebb; there wasn't much chance of hanging on longer without any food at all.
The voices echoed dully through the office walls while Mallory thought of Sophie and whether all that potential would ever be achieved. He didn't fear death. For so long, it had almost felt as if he had been shuffling through life in a dream, simply waiting for the end to turn up. Now that it had, he wasn't surprised. But he was sad that he might not be there for Sophie, as she had hoped.
There were still options. He considered dropping over the cathedral walls and attempting to dodge the hellish creatures beyond; he guessed one or two would try that before long. Oddly, he still had hope; that surprised him. He thought hope had long since been excised from his system.
The council had been talking for a good hour. Mallory stretched his legs, then slid down the wall to sit for a while, no longer caring if Blaine emerged to castigate him for not standing tall and erect as a knight should. He knew they'd only brought him along because they didn't want him passing news of the crisis to anyone else.
Through the window he saw fire erupt against the eastern wall. Part of the masonry crumbled, and the regular crew of guards and knights who manned the defences every evening set about desperately trying to shore up what was left.
As he watched, two things struck him: firstly, that the enemy appeared to know of events within the cathedral — the attack had clearly coincided with the murder and the destruction of the supplies; and secondly, not only had the enemy grown stronger, but the defences had also grown weaker. It was this that intrigued him the most. On the surface there should be no rational reason why the cathedral's defences were starting to fail. But what he had learned over the previous weeks about the nature of the Blue Fire hinted at the reason.
The earth energy, whatever designation was chosen for it, was a power of the spirit, strengthened by belief. To the pagans it was the essence of nature. To Christians it was the spirit and power of God. The same force, different ways of approaching it. The same undeniable pathway to the numinous.
If belief gave it a charge, that explained why certain places became sacred — churches, stone circles, hilltops, springs — sites where the Blue
Fire was already strong and made more potent by worshipping humans, creating a spiritual atmosphere that was ripe for connection with the divine.
And as the Caretaker had told him, the cathedral had somehow become supercharged; that had kept the enemy at bay for a long time. But now the rejuvenating faith of the brothers was being knocked by successive blows — the murders, the siege, the diminishing supplies. The site was slowly losing its power. If things carried on the same way, if the brothers found out they had no more food, soon the walls would fall completely and the supernatural forces would sweep across them all.
Of course, we might have starved to death long before then, he thought wryly. But the Adversary had been very clever: it had all been linked.
He was disturbed from his deep thoughts by the door swinging open and heated conversation spilling out into the corridor. Wearily, he pushed himself back to his feet.
Stefan marched out, hands behind his back, his face dark with determination. 'Do what I say. This is the only way. We have the ultimate obligation. If we fail… if God's light goes out because we turned away… because we weren't strong enough… then we will be damned for all eternity.' He marched straight past Mallory as if he wasn't there.
Blaine followed him out, unusually angry. There had obviously been some disagreement. He paused by Mallory. 'If you do anything to destroy morale, anything at all, I will personally break your fucking neck,' he said, quietly and coldly. He turned to Roeser. 'Organise the teams. Everyone works through the night. We'll punch the tunnel through by tomorrow or someone's head will roll, and it'll probably be yours.'
Daniels, Gardener and Miller were gathered together in the dorm, clearly on edge. Miller jumped up anxiously when Mallory entered. 'What's going on?' he blurted.
Mallory wondered how much he could tell them without prompting Blaine to carry out his threat.
'There are all sorts of rumours flying around,' Miller said; he couldn't keep still.
Gardener sucked on a roll-up, on the surface the picture of calm, but Mallory could see from his eyes that he was troubled. 'They've cranked us up to the highest alert,' he said. 'Summat's up.'
'Are they sending us out to fight those things?' Daniels looked drained, his face puffy as if he had been crying. Mallory could see he had been crushed by what had happened to his boyfriend and what that had made him face within himself.
'Gibson's dead.' Mallory dropped wearily on to his bunk and closed his eyes.
'Oh, no!' Miller whined.
'The same as before?' Daniels asked.
'The same.' In the dark behind his eyes, with their disembodied voices floating around him, Mallory made another connection; they were coming thick and fast, each prompting another. Everything had been planned from the beginning. They had been lured to Bratton Camp so they could bring that terrible creature back. A hidden assassin to strike from the inside while the hellish forces attacked from without. How very clever. How pathetically stupid they all seemed in comparison; a stupidity born of arrogance. Even after all that had happened, they still thought they were top of the pile, better than anything else in Existence. They weren't, not by a long way.
But it was the words of the Caretaker that struck him the most: Look to your hearts. And then he thought of the severed hand he had seen at Bratton Camp, seemingly belonging to one of them, yet apparently not. Now he could guess what it all meant: the thing was inside one of them, somehow, regenerating what was lost; or perhaps even it was one of them, putting on skin and bones and face like other people put on a suit of clothes.
That was how they had brought it back. That was how it survived on the sacred ground of the cathedral where no other supernatural creature could walk, the ultimate fifth columnist.
He looked at the faces surrounding him: Daniels, Gardener, Miller, and then thought of Hipgrave locked in his little room in the infirmary. He had spent hours with all of them since the return and they had all seemed perfectly human: flawed, wrapped up in their own little troubles. How well it hid. How could he ever tell which one of them it was?
'What's up with you, lad?' Gardener was watching him carefully. 'You're looking at us as if you've never seen us before.'
Desperately, he tried to recall where they all had been at the time of the murders. They had been with him on the walls when Cornelius's body had been discovered… but when he had been murdered? And Julian, where had any of them been when he died? Hipgrave had certainly been locked away when Gibson was killed. Or had he? Perhaps he was free, loose in the cathedral.
'I'm just tired,' he said, closing his eyes again.
Who could he trust? Gardener was hardened by life, but there was humanity burning inside him. Miller was bright and innocent, all his emotions on the surface. Daniels might have been temporarily broken by what he had seen earlier, but his love of life still shone beneath that. Even shattered, sad Hipgrave, unable to live up to his ambitions, was basically a good man. How could it be any of them?
'Are you all right?' Miller asked, concerned.
But what he did know was that if he gave any sign he suspected, he wouldn't stand a chance. 'Fine,' he said. 'You know they're punching the tunnel through tomorrow, hopefully? Putting a lot of steam behind it. Working through the night.'
'Why?' Gardener asked suspiciously. 'For the last few days they seemed quite happy letting us munch through spuds while they took their time.'
'Maybe they finally realised time's running ou
t,' Daniels said.
The snow stopped falling some time during the night, but by then everywhere was blanketed by a covering almost two feet thick in parts. It was generally agreed by those who came from the area that there hadn't been a snowfall like it for a good few years, not even during the previous year's harsh winter.
The digging, however, had continued frantically throughout the night, with large teams working a strict rota system. They had partially demolished a wall surrounding the bishop's palace to provide stone to line the tunnel, and with wood torn from the rafters of another building, it looked as though they had beaten the numerous collapses that had held them up until that point.
'Amazing what you can do when a crisis focuses your mind,' Mallory muttered, forgetting Miller was with him.
'What crisis?' Miller asked. 'You're talking as if it's even worse than we think.'
'It's always worse than you think.' Mallory looked out over the crowd of brothers who had gathered to watch the digging. He saw suspicion and trepidation in their faces as they picked up on the powerful mood of anxiety hanging over those in charge. The brethren were increasingly loath to attend to their duties and some were even beginning to skip services. Although the Blues and the inquisitors were stamping out open dissent, they couldn't control the Chinese whispers rustling through the community. Respect for Stefan and his repressive rule appeared to be crumbling quickly. People had been prepared to tolerate him if he got them out of current difficulties and provided security, but things had rapidly gone from bad to worse.
The dissent, though, clearly had a profound effect on Stefan and his supporters. Mallory could see it in the hard lines of their faces: any jubilation they might have felt at their unexpected triumph had faded, but it was plain that now they had tasted power they were not going to let it go at any cost. Mallory saw them all over the place, though they were easy to miss. Seemingly faceless, they passed through rooms without any noticeable trace, like ghosts; the effects only became apparent later. They were particularly adept at using scripture to support their hardline views. Most didn't have the time, the energy or the intellectual rigour to argue against them; sometimes it was easier to allow oneself to be swayed. And again, only later were the results apparent.
'You went to see Hipgrave this morning, didn't you?' Miller said curiously.
'Yes.' Mallory had known it was only a matter of time before Stefan did something to bolster his position, so he wasn't surprised to see him striding up to the dig with his fawning entourage.
'How is he?'
'Still locked in.'
Miller looked blank at this response, then said, 'Are you OK, Mallory? You seem a little distant today. Have I done something to offend you?'
'Nothing more than usual.'
They hushed as Stefan prepared to give an impromptu oration, only as he began to intone gravely, it was soon apparent that it wasn't impromptu at all: the words had been carefully crafted.
'I have an important announcement to make,' he said, after climbing atop a pile of masonry. 'We have had many hardships heaped upon us in recent times, and it would seem to me — and, I would think, to most people here — that we have been failing our Lord. We have not been devout enough… pure enough. We have not turned our hearts and minds to the teachings of the Lord God, our Father. We have not expunged the sins of our past lives. Rather, we have allowed them to grow fruitful on the vines of our souls, and to the Lord, that could only be an abomination. And so it is time for us to cleanse ourselves.'
Mallory tried to guess what tricks Stefan had planned, but the bishop was always cunning.
'Our sacred relic, which has made this cathedral so strong, is filled with God's power,' he continued. 'And through prayer, deep in the spirit, our Lord has illuminated me on its workings. It can, quite literally, see into the depths of a soul. It can find out your sins. We — the Chapter of Canons and myself — have decided to use that power to enable us all to cleanse ourselves… to make us closer to God in every way, so that we can overcome these trials presented to us. One by one, every brother shall be brought before the relic to have their sins divined. In the glorious light of true confession and personal revelation, we shall all find our earthly redemption.'
It took a while for the meaning of his words to filter through to the crowd's consciousness, and when it did it was not welcomed with the universal acclaim of the bishop's past orations. But that was clearly what he intended. It must have been in the planning for a while; Stefan had hinted at it on the previous evening. It was an undoubted masterstroke. In the eyes of the hardliners, everyone had sinned, and all the brothers knew it; somewhere in the deep recesses of the heart, everyone had a little unpleasantness tucked away. It might not be anything bad — a touch of jealousy, a wisp of pride, a hint of sloth, basic human flaws — but the Bible told them it was wrong and the programming of their religion made it impossible to shake that at the most basic level. Mallory had come to understand how the concept of sin was like a constant buzz in the background of everyday life for the devout.
And Stefan had pointedly failed to mention what he, or the inquisitors, or the other Church authorities would do once they knew everyone's dirty little secrets. Would they simply absolve everyone with a little prayer? Would they hold it in abeyance to gain leverage? Or would they pass judgment?
There was nothing so good for diverting peoples' attention from dissent as the contemplation of their own inner lives. Their security on earth and their chances of eternal reward — or eternal damnation — lay in the balance. How clever Stefan was.
'I wonder if the relic can actually do that, or if this is another of Stefan's little manipulations?' Mallory mused.
Miller appeared to have no views on the matter — he simply continued to watch the activity of the diggers — but Mallory guessed there would be very few others taking the news so calmly.
The digging continued at a frantic pace under the relentless insistence of Blaine and the Blues. No rest was allowed and when anyone flagged they were instantly replaced. Errors were pointed out harshly, so that work proceeded both quickly and with the utmost care. With the judicious use of the timber and masonry, they managed to avoid any further tunnel collapses, but the removal of the shale and gravel covering most of that area was backbreaking work. Even so, it appeared they would be through before the day was done.
However, the cancellation of lunch after the abandonment of breakfast caused a rising tide of concern, and when the evening mealtime approached with no sign of activity in the refectory, panic began to surface. Whatever denials were issued, everyone knew that the only explanation could be that supplies had finally been exhausted.
A large crowd gathered at the bishop's palace as night fell. There was anger, and fear, and raised voices. Stefan came out, and for the first time Mallory saw a hint of anxiety that events were running out of his control, that his hard-fought position was slipping away from him. But he controlled himself, as he always did, and told them there would be fresh supplies that very evening. The tunnel would be completed and food would be brought through from the adjoining camp; and it wouldn't be a thin diet of vegetables. It would be a time of celebration after all their hardship. They had his word on that.
That made the bishop a hostage to fortune at a time when he had so much to lose, but Mallory knew Stefan would never allow himself to fail. He was a consummate politician who would have succeeded whether his chosen sphere had been business, Parliament or anywhere else where hard, driven people could rise to the top.
Mallory saw it reflected in Stefan's expression as he turned to go: the bishop knew that, while his words had eased the minds of some of the protestors, there were others present who had set their hearts against him. That expression said so many things to Mallory, but most of all it showed a frightening determination that transcended basic human boundaries. Mallory was worried by what he saw there.
For that reason, he feared the worst when he was summoned to the bishop's palace as twilight
fell. The lack of food had left his stomach aching as if he'd eaten sour apples, and the raw cold was eating its way into his bones. The snow had started falling again in the late afternoon, slowly bringing a pristine covering to the churned-up slush where the mob had waited outside the official residence.
Stefan's personal assistant, a man in his late fifties with a troubling smile and an oily nature, showed Mallory into the drawing room where a fire blazed. The warmth was such a relief that Mallory's heart leaped. He was instantly struck by the glitter of Christmas decorations: tinsel and streamers were strung across the wall and ceilings, and several small candles illuminated a well-worn Nativity scene laid out on the antique sideboard. It was so incongruous in the bitter air of hardship that hung over the entire cathedral compound that he wondered if Stefan had gone crazy from the stress.
Stefan sat in a high-backed leather armchair next to the fire, his face placid but his eyes alive with a disturbing passion. 'We must never forget our Lord's birth,' he said quietly, noticing the direction of Mallory's gaze, 'even amid all this pain and suffering. Especially because of it.'
Amid everything, Mallory hadn't once considered that Christmas was approaching.
Stefan appeared to read his thoughts. 'Compared with everything else that has been happening, Christmas might not seem important. But it is, it is. It is the reason why we must overcome, why even in the darkest hours there is always hope. It is a shining symbol that allows us to put into perspective all the passing misery of this dark world.'
Mallory watched Stefan cautiously, trying to see if this was the start of some manipulation. If it was, the bishop had hidden it well.
'I don't truly know you, Mr Mallory, but I know many like you,' he continued. 'You have an individual nature. You do not suffer fools gladly, and you have a strong disregard for authority. Unlike Mr Blaine, I do not believe that marks you out as a troublemaker. I am not so unconfident in my abilities that I feel the need to control everybody. Indeed, it is often healthy in any environment to have voices prepared to point out that the king has no clothes. Of course, that kind of commentary can only be allowed to go so far. It must never undermine the cohesiveness of any community.'
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