by H. S. Cross
He looked to the Bishop—saw his face, felt instantly bereft.
—Interesting, the Bishop said.
—What? Morgan balked. What’s interesting?
The Bishop paused.
—That’s all I’m prepared to say at present. But—
He took him by the shoulder and led him to the door.
—Having got that exercise out of the way, I can see we’re going to have to pull out the stops with you.
—I’m not an organ. And I’m not your experiment!
The man hesitated.
—I know you aren’t.
Morgan pulled away:
—Do you want to know why we’ll never agree?
The Bishop stared at him.
—You know what I’m talking about. It’s because if he exists, he doesn’t care. You say he loves us, but then when people get scythed down, he just stands there and feels nothing and does nothing.
The Bishop looked to the floor, and then back to him:
—Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible.
Morgan clenched hot fists:
—I suppose that’s why you want me to blub.
—When Jesus wept, he didn’t blub. He wept as a person overwhelmed by sadness and agitated by anger. He wept with the wrath of God in the face of death.
* * *
Morgan slammed the bedroom door. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to switch off. His head pounded. His hands throbbed and stung. He threw off his dressing gown and put out the light.
Just what did the man mean by whacking him in such a systematic and objectionable fashion after weeks of declaring him unwhackable? And then declaring him, or it, or something else, interesting yet refusing to elaborate? Then referring to the most humiliating experience of Morgan’s life as that exercise and suggesting that it had been a mere prologue, something to be got out of the way before the real artillery could be rolled in.
Was he at a school for suffering, taught by the Bishop? Or was the truth as it had seemed just now, the Bishop ministering to him, and to things unseen?
58
The weather was entirely out of tune with the moment. The rain ought to be lashing the windows of the train, wind howling across the fields, driving sheep to shelter. He himself ought to be three days into a February cold, head heavy, throat raw. Or imprisoned in school uniform, shivering in a third-class carriage, having run out of pocket money and desperate for tea.
He was in the peak of health. The sun blazed and the train chugged through a countryside rampant with wildflowers. He was wearing light summer clothing and traveling in a first-class carriage with the Bishop, who ensured a steady supply of tea and sandwiches. The Bishop passed the first leg of the journey reading his prayer book and then moved on to the newspaper, interspersed with naps. Morgan had bought a magazine at the station, but after gorging on the minutiae of cricket, golfing, tennis, and sailing, he had nothing to defend him against the unsettling summer’s day.
The Bishop had revealed nothing of their itinerary, but at the change in London, it had been impossible to conceal their destination.
—I don’t know what you’re hoping to see, Morgan said, but the Academy’s empty during the holidays.
The Bishop had given him a look of fifty Christmases.
—And I hardly think your physician will approve of your hacking up to the barn, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.
The Bishop continued to look at him. Morgan took the man’s newspaper and read it.
Somewhere in the middle of Lincolnshire, Morgan asked acidly whether the Bishop was amusing himself with the cloak-and-dagger.
—I am not amusing myself. But knowing you, even imperfectly, I’m convinced that discussing matters in advance is an error.
—I thought you wanted me to do more thinking, Morgan snapped.
—During the trial, not beforehand.
—If you’re hoping I’ll go there and blub over Spaulding, you’re in for a disappointment.
The Bishop flagged the tea trolley.
* * *
They arrived in York and were met by a man in clerical costume who bundled them into a motorcar and maneuvered timidly through traffic. Morgan hadn’t set foot in the place since his father moved to London. It was smaller than it had been. Alien shops had opened. But the rest of it—walls, gates, the turn at the theater that led to their house—bored into his skull and every bony substance. The clerical chauffeur glanced in the mirror.
—You’re hungry. Evensong, then tea.
They pulled around the back of the Minster. Morgan was in the peak of health; he felt sick.
* * *
Evensong took his every nerve and scraped. He concentrated on breathing in and out; at least, he thought scornfully, the Bishop ought to approve of that. There was nothing visible to fear, yet he felt prey to the dread he’d known in the Tower, when he’d crashed into Spaulding so hard it opened a fissure in the world, permitting the slow, nearly undetectable infusion of the thing.
Now the place crawled with it. The windows of the Minster might admit sunshine through stain, the choir might assault the ears with sounds deep enough to hurt, the clergyman leading the service might read that prayer the Bishop liked to say about the night, but the voice of that clergyman was one Morgan had hoped never to hear again, and the darkness was too potent ever to be deterred by prayer.
—Wilberforce? the clergyman was saying. David’s son? Of course.
The Bishop was speaking with the man, the man whose name Morgan had made it a point never to recall.
—You’ve grown, said the man. You look so much like your mother.
—My sisters look like my mother, Morgan retorted. Except for Veronica. She looks like my father, and so do I.
The clergyman asked after his sisters by name and smiled in a way that made Morgan want to swear.
—I didn’t realize you knew one another, the Bishop said.
—We don’t, replied Morgan.
—I had the sad duty of conducting Mrs. Wilberforce’s funeral.
—You didn’t know her!
—Alas, said the man.
It was a hundred degrees in the nave. He was going to be sick in a moment. But rather than conducting them as promised to tea and then the Academy, the clerical chauffeur stood subserviently by as the vile clergyman gestured to the north of the church in the direction of the saint-whatever chapel, the place Morgan had vowed never to return.
A rush of shame, then, like oil from a trapdoor: this wasn’t a stop on the way to their destination. He was monstrously stupid not to have realized it at once. He reeled on the Bishop:
—You can just forget it. You absolute beast!
—You don’t have to go there, the Bishop replied. You have a choice.
—You’re bloody well right, I do. I’m not your plaything!
The Minster’s wide doors stood open to the summer. A clutch of foreigners peered inside. Dust blew across the threshold. Droit, in summer suit, stood with a girl under the portico, pointing to her guidebook and taking a lick of her ice cream.
He didn’t have to do anything. He could leave the whole tomb and go sit in the sun. He could buy ice cream and eat it. It was the kind of summer’s evening not seen in Yorkshire, not since Patron’s Day, since—
—You’re hungry and exhausted from your journey, the clergyman was saying. Why not have a seat in the sun while I pop back and change, and then we’ll—
Morgan turned away and strode down the aisle to the chapel.
The other one was there. He sat in the back corner, leaning against the chairs in front of him, head buried in his arms. His suit was dark. His shoulders were shaking. This was why he needed his lights punched out.
Yet, he was there. He wasn’t outside in the sun. He was there in the slow-chapped chapel. Four years had passed; other people had got on with things, but this one remembered.
On wet Remembrance Day they were supposed to blub for a lot of men who got in the way of bullets, but no
body wept for women who got in the way of nothing, who enlisted for nothing but got scythed down sitting in their beds at night. (Emily had told him eventually, how she’d had a headache, how she’d sat up in bed just after they’d put out the light, and how—) Nobody blubbed for boys who saved people from their own stupidity and then got themselves scythed open so that everything they could and should have been was over. Nobody stood in the rain and remembered them, whose only crime was pitying when they shouldn’t. People went on with their pointless lives, imagining it was a summer’s evening fit for walking and flirting and enjoying, and no one remembered what the thing had done, no one remembered that it still even now hadn’t been repaired, could never be repaired, and even more that the thing still hung around them, smirking its gigantic, unconquerable grimace because it had won, it would always win, and they could do nothing against it.
The Bishop stepped into the chapel and gazed at the carvings up by the place where the box had been before they’d lifted it to take it out and Emily had thrown herself across it and—
The Bishop moved to the chair beside the other one and sat. He, too, leaned forward, crossed his hands, and lowered his head.
—Give rest, O Christ, to thy servants with thy saints, Charles Spaulding, Elizabeth Wilberforce, Clara Stires Sebastian. Where sorrow—
The Bishop’s voice broke, the other one sat up, and Morgan fled away from them both, across the room and down the longest, farthest row.
The place between his shoulders strained to snapping. It took such an effort to hold them back when all they wanted was to fall forward and leave the walls unguarded, let the battering win. Every corner of him hurt and still there was more. It hurt in his person, in his mind, and yet also somewhere else, flooding the city and sweeping it away.
Before they took the box away, they’d said those words the Bishop had said. The clergyman sprinkled water on it—All we go down to the dust—and the men surrounded it, and the time was ending, except he wanted it to go on and on—Alleluia, alleluia—and when Emily made that sound and everyone else started to sob, he heard her voice in his head, not remembered but real, Take care of my Morgan, take care—and he had promised, meant to—
Her Morgan wasn’t there anymore. He’d grown up. Been kicked up. That boy was dead as she was, the boy she had loved, the boy who had known the truth and got on with it.
An arm fell across him, not the Bishop, not the other one, but somehow warm, alive. The arm knew. It hurt as he was hurting, and it stayed with him even as he fell forward onto the chair, onto that knee which could hold everything: she was never coming back, and it mattered so colossally that it cut him out of ordinary life. Even when he was most physically with people, he wasn’t with them, because he hadn’t given himself to them, or the truth. But he was giving himself now, surrendering to this pain, pain deserved probably, but where was the forgiveness? He was sorry! So sorry! No one heard him. No one stopped it. No one brought her back where she belonged.
Even so, the arm continued with him, sorrowing with him, having been with him all along, even at his worst, and even now when he was weaker than he’d ever been, now that he was admitting it, how broken and desperate and blind and deaf, and how unanswerably needy—he, Morgan, her Morgan, his Morgan, called by name, known by name, always, always known—
A clatter. A crash. Across the chapel, the Bishop was sliding to the floor.
Morgan was on his feet and shouting, shoving chairs and crossing the aisle. This was not an event of the mind. This was an event of the body. He felt for a pulse. For breath. Were you supposed to press on their chest? Their back? The Bishop’s face was the wrong kind of pale, but the skin wasn’t cold. No blood poured out.
He put a hand on the Bishop’s head and another on his heart and tried to remember what to say against the dark.
Breathe.
Shaking.
Breathe!
Silent, still.
Come from the winds and breathe upon these slain!
Dark before, behind, above, below, a heatless, heartless nothing.
That I may rise—
Rattle.
That I may stand—
Footsteps?
—I say …
Man, breaking into—
—Your Grace!
Into the time, making it run—fast, far, loud. And with the man, people, noising, pushing Morgan aside.
—Please!
But now, even now, those eyes were fluttering. That mouth was stirring. Bone to bone, flesh to flesh. And they were helping the Bishop to sit upright, breath going in and breath coming out, helping him to a chair. And Morgan’s eyes were streaming, but he didn’t care because the Bishop was breathing and he knew where he was and when he was and who he was, and he was reaching for Morgan’s hand:
—You’re stuck with me a bit longer, I’m afraid.
People were bringing water, and other people were rushing back with smelling salts and flannels and more water, and brandy, and before the kerfuffle died down, the Bishop was getting to his feet, accepting the brandy and refusing the hospital, with a force Morgan knew, sending away the people and insisting on being taken where he was expected, where tea and bed awaited.
Morgan and the chauffeur took his arms, but he walked under his own power out of the chapel, out of the Minster, into the sunshine and the motorcar. And the chauffeur was driving them through the streets, out of the city, along the highways, across the cooling evening, passing people on bicycles and farmers with their sheep and two little girls tangled with flowers. The Bishop gazed out the window as if surveying a long-delayed homecoming. His hand held Morgan’s wrist, whether to give reassurance or receive it, Morgan couldn’t tell.
Then the lanes were familiar, and they were pulling through the gates and into the quad, and the motor choked to a stop, and it was quiet.
The Bishop squinted through the glass:
—This is it, then?
Morgan nodded. The man rolled down his window and perched his elbow on the sill. He smelled the air. He looked to Morgan.
—I see.
The man nodded, then laughed:
—I see!
Morgan laughed, too. He didn’t understand, but he laughed.
The chauffeur was getting out of the motorcar then and helping the Bishop, and Dr. Sebastian was hurrying from somewhere and putting his arm around his father’s waist. The Bishop was protesting, and Dr. Sebastian was telling him off, for coming up, for disobeying his physician, for doing what he always did: listen to no one and risk life and limb for his own stubborn—
—Just what are you laughing at? Dr. Sebastian demanded of Morgan.
Morgan couldn’t answer. He could only lean against the motorcar, ribs shuddering, lungs wheezing with laughter.
They took the Bishop into the little garden behind the Headmaster’s house, where there was tea and bread and butter. Sunset poured across the walls, and Dr. Sebastian continued to scold.
—It was warm, the Bishop said. The circumstances were trying, and I momentarily … It’s very embarrassing. I beg you to change the subject.
—I shan’t change the subject, not until you admit—
The Bishop kept his eyes on Morgan, as if what mattered was the two of them and what had passed between them and around them and within them, even now. As if they had come to St. Stephen’s not to view his son’s project but to understand Morgan’s.
—You aren’t immortal, Father. If you won’t hear reason—
—Oh, I’d much rather hear about this young history master Wilberforce has told me so much about.
Dr. Sebastian looked to Morgan, a glance of displeasure so sharp that Morgan felt the blade, that he might do to the Academy what the scythe had done to people he loved—
—Sir, Morgan said, please don’t change the Academy. I know it isn’t the best place in the world, but …
How could he say he loved it?
—I’ve been brought here to make changes, Dr. Sebastian replied.
> —It’s a good place, Morgan said huskily. I know it doesn’t look it, but it has been. It wants to be. If only someone could understand it, it would be good again.
His head pounded. His throat ached.
—Wilberforce, Dr. Sebastian said, sit down, eat those sandwiches—
—Sir—
—And have a little faith.
* * *
He ate until he wasn’t hungry anymore, and then Dr. Sebastian sent him to bed. The light was fading, and in the little room of the Headmaster’s house, the lamp had no bulb. He got under the covers, eyes swollen, bone-weary, unable to rest. He’d gone to bed without examination, without prayers, without anyone’s hand on his head. Was he a person who needed such things? Such things, and such and such things …
He had gone by his own will, down and more down, and there at the bottom, where the hurt kept hurting, there, down there, someone … something was happening.
The dark drew near. He felt it as he breathed—thick, adamant—but in his ears a rumble, like footsteps barreling, him in sights as if nothing else mattered, impact coming, too late to dodge—a thousand rushing—captain—breath—now, now—now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My grateful thanks:
To Jennifer Gibbs, Jennifer Turner Hall, Jean Wagner, Camille Guthrie, Andrea Codrington Lippke, and Penny Ghartey, for encouragement, accountability, and probing reads.
To Cameron Henderson-Begg, for insights sharp and gentle, and for cricket tutelage.
To Nell Mead, for advice medical, historical, and dramatic.
To Joseph Housley, John Collins, and the hive mind of Twitter friends, for help with language, period, law, munitions, sport, and custom.
To Alice Tasman, for warmth, realism, ambition, and vision.
To Jonathan Galassi, for enthusiasm and belief.
To Christopher Richards, for the most excellent, sensitive, and challenging editing I could imagine.
To the Reverend Andrew C. Mead and the Reverend Victor Lee Austin, for inspiration, in every sense of the word, more than they know.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
