The Young Unicorns

by Madeleine L'engle

  A long block away, on Amsterdam Avenue, Mr. Rochester and Dave were passing them, unseen, like ships in the night. Behind them the three Alphabats stalked. When the boy and the dog turned west towards the river, they sprang. Dave felt his arms grabbed, pinioned, himself pulled backwards. The side of a hand came down sharply against his wrist so that he let go the dog’s leash.

  “Home, Rochester! Home, boy!” he shouted.

  The three youths did not seem inclined to go after the dog, who was galloping down the street, leash trailing. They shook Dave until his teeth hurt.

  “None of your funny business.”

  “Don’t drop your gourds.”

  “C’mon. Bishop wants you.”

  He was propelled up Amsterdam. “Leave me be,” he snarled. “I’ll come.”

  “Let him loose, but watch him.”

  “He’s never rubbed the lamp.”

  “Shut up. C’mon.”

  Dave walked angrily between two of the boys. The third walked ahead, setting the pace, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see that the others were following properly, that Dave did not try to get away.

  —Who does he think he is? Dave asked silently.—N? He might as well be A, or F, or R. They’re all faceless. They’re letters without names. Did I ever want that? “What’s this about a lamp?”

  N looked back. “Shut up. Never mind.”

  “He’ll see, won’t he, N?”

  “C’mon.”

  —Mr. Rochester’ll go back to the house, Dave thought.—They’ll see him and know something’s wrong. What is the Bishop doing? What have I done?

  Mr. Rochester was his only hope.

  —I’m responsible for Rob, he thought.—Emily’ll never forgive me if anything happens to Rob.

  And then he thought:—It’s not because of Emily that I care about Rob. It’s me. I care.

  When Vicky and Emily reached the Cathedral Close, the lower gate was locked, so they walked past Diocesan House to the gate at 111th Street, which was left open for cars until midnight. Just uptown of the gate was the great slumbering body of the Cathedral.

  —But is it asleep? Vicky wondered. She thought of Rob’s flying buttresses, wings folded for the night.

  “St. James chapel,” Emily said, fingers tight on Vicky’s arm. “Take me there.”

  “The Cathedral’s locked for the night. You know that.”

  Emily’s fingers dug through Vicky’s heavy navy school coat. “Of course I know it, you nit. But if the Bishop wants Rob to meet him in St. James chapel there must be some way in. It wouldn’t be any of the big doors. But there are doors that go into the nave from the side. Let’s walk along and you look.”

  When Emily was walking an unfamiliar route her steps became slow, tentative, shuffling. Usually this infuriated her. She loathed walking like a blind person. Only Mr. Theo or Dave could snap back at her: “Which is what you are.”

  Now it was Vicky who was annoyed at Emily’s dragging steps, at being slowed down. Finally she exploded, “This is nuts! I don’t believe you heard Dave right.”

  “Shush.” Emily snapped her fingers, listened. “Aren’t we near a door?”

  On their left were steps. There was a door at the top with a light above it, showing a number 5. “Wait. I’ll go see if it’s unlocked.” Vicky placed Emily’s hand on the cold iron stair rail.

  This door was about two thirds along the length of the nave, Emily thought. She listened to Vicky running up the steps, tugging unsuccessfully at the door. “Okay,” she said as Vicky descended. “There’re more doors. I know there are. There’s that one off St. James chapel; I’ve gone in that door with Dave when we’ve come to listen to Mr. Theo play. Come on.”

  “Just one more door,” Vicky said stubbornly. “Just one, and that’s all. And if that’s locked I’m taking you home,” she went on as they walked slowly along by the side of the Cathedral. “I never should have come with you. Mother and Daddy’ll be furious with me and for once I don’t blame them. I’m three years older than you are and I never should have let you drag me here.”

  “Oh, hush,” Emily said. “How can I listen to anything?”

  “You hush. There’s a door here. Wait a minute.” Vicky darted across the path to the door. Again it was closed tight. When she came back, saying, “Locked,” Emily was trembling with rage.

  “Don’t ever go off and leave me that way again!”

  But Vicky was too agitated to feel the contrition that normally would have filled her had she left Emily in the midst of unidentified and unfathomable darkness. “Okay! The South Transept steps are right here.”

  “No! The Transept’ll be locked. I want to try the door by St. James. Come on, Vicky. Please. It’s right around through the gates and by the Dean’s Garden. I know it is.”

  Emily was right.

  Vicky steered her past the sacristies, through the stone gate posts and into the Dean’s Garden. She did not say that a stone statue by a marble bench looked, in the shadows, like someone crouched, waiting to pounce on them; that the rhododendron bushes, huddled against the wall, might be witches.

  Emily said, “Vicky, I want to go up the stairs with you this time. Even if the door’s locked I want to listen. I can hear if something’s going on better than you can.”

  This was true. But it was, at this moment, the smallest part of it. Emily was terrified at being left alone again where she had no idea where she was, where she was totally lost and unable to help herself. The feeling of the ship of the Cathedral, solid and strong in the waters of darkness, became a menacing threat instead of a symbol of security. She had a sensation that the great pile of stone instead of floating magnificently on the bones of the city island was lowering over her, would fall on her and crush her. Without realizing what she was doing she began to rub at her eyes as she had done in the early days of her blindness, as though by doing so she could open them to light again.

  Vicky did not argue. The two girls went up the steps together.

  “Shush!” Emily said. “Don’t clatter so. The guard’ll hear us.”

  “He’s over by Diocesan House. I saw him. He can’t possibly hear us.” But Vicky wished that he could. If the guard heard them, caught them, then all he could do was to return them safely to their parents, and then everybody would know if Rob hadn’t returned with Dave and Mr. Rochester as he was supposed to …

  The door she now tried was, like the others, locked.

  Emily put her ear against the cold wood of the door and listened, listened. But she could hear nothing beyond what might be the normal night noises of a vast and empty building.

  “Let’s go ask the guard—” Vicky suggested tentatively.

  “Ask him what?” Emily snapped. “If Dave and Rob are with the Bishop?”

  This wasn’t, Vicky thought, such a bad idea. “Why not?”

  “No. I want to talk to Canon Tallis. He’s the only one who knows anything about what’s going on. Take me over to Cathedral House and, whatever you do, don’t let the guard see us.”

  They traversed the route to Cathedral House without mishap. In the small vestibule Vicky rang the bell marked DEAN’S GUESTS. Rang and rang. She could see through the iron and glass doors to the empty reception hall, where a lamp was lit on the magazine table. There was a nighttime feeling of desertion about the place which added to her anxiety.

  “We’ll have to go home,” she said. “There isn’t anybody here.”

  Emily’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Okay. Let’s talk to your parents.”

  “That’s what we should have done in the first place.”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “Look at all the time we’ve wasted this way! And if Mother and Daddy’ve found out we’re gone, they’ll—” she broke off, pulling Emily back into the shadows of the vestibule.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Shh!” Vicky could hear Emily breathing quickly, nervously beside her, could sense the other girl’s frustration at not bein
g able to see what was going on. She whispered, “It’s Dave! There’re three kids with him, like the ones I saw in the park with Canon Tallis and—Rob isn’t with them.”

  “What’re we waiting for!” Emily cried. “Come on!”

  “Hush,” Vicky said again. “Em, I think they’ve hi-jacked Dave or something, the way he’s walking, the way they’re looking at him—”

  “Okay,” Emily whispered, “we’ve got to follow them. Which way are they going?”

  “Towards the Cathedral. They must have come in to the Close by the 110th Street gate.”

  “How?”

  “Dave has keys.”

  “Come on,” Emily said. “We can’t let them see us but we mustn’t let them out of sight.”

  “Emily.” Vicky tried to sound calm, reasonable. “I can manage better without you.”

  “No—”

  “You’ll be all right here in the vestibule.”

  But panic rose in Emily’s throat. “No—”

  In the light from the reception hall Vicky could see Emily’s face, tight with terror. “Okay, then,” she said, putting Emily’s hand on her arm. “But we’ll have to move quickly. You mustn’t shuffle, Emily. You’ll have to trust me.”

  Usually when Emily walked with Vicky her hand rested lightly on the older girl’s arm; she was able to feel through her sensitive fingertips before Vicky told her that they had come to a turn or a curb. But now fear made her hold on to Vicky with all the strength of her pianist’s fingers. She moved through a darkness where all shapes, unseen but felt, were menacing, all echoes a confusion of chaos instead of a pattern of sound ordering her night.

  “Step up,” Vicky ordered in a hissing whisper. “Up. Up. Up. One more. Turn right.”

  “Where are we?” Emily asked, though she should have known that the choir buildings now lay ahead of them, that they were going back in the direction of the Dean’s Garden. She stepped out into nothingness, trying not to shuffle, trying to keep up with Vicky; the ground seemed to rise up and hit her outstretched foot too soon, so that her whole body was jolted and her teeth were set on edge. “Where are they?”

  “Shh,” Vicky said. “I’m trying to see. I think they’re going towards St. James chapel.” She hurried along the path. “Turn left.”

  Emily, following, stumbled and almost fell. Vicky jerked her upright. She realized that Emily was incapable now of using the acute senses that usually gave her an astonishing amount of independence.—What I’ll do, Vicky thought,—is try to see where they’re taking Dave and then I’ll take Emily home …

  She halted, suddenly, at the entrance to the Dean’s Garden. She could see the boys at the top of the steps. Dave was evidently having trouble opening the door, and the boys were looking at him, at the door, otherwise they would surely have seen the two girls.

  Vicky pulled Emily into the protection of one of the stone gateposts. She put her lips to Emily’s ear. “They’re there, at the top of the steps. Dave can’t get in. Please try to listen.”

  They crouched against the wall. Vicky could feel her heart pounding, thought she could hear Emily’s. The boys were muttering. She strained her untrained ears.

  “Hurry.”

  “Get that door open.”

  “Quit stalling.”

  Dave’s voice: “The key’s jammed.”

  “He did it on purpose.”

  “Let me try.”

  “Lay off.”

  A sound of scuffling. Then: “Here it goes.”

  “Can’t get the key out.”

  “Leave it.”

  “C’mon. Bishop’s waiting.”

  Silence.

  Vicky peered around the gatepost. “They’ve gone in.”

  Emily had moved through the wild ocean of her terror into a cold sea of calm. “Come on, Vicky. You heard what they said about the lock.”

  “No,” Vicky said. “We’re going home. We’ll tell Mother and Daddy.”

  “Vicky! We’ve got to find Rob.”

  Rob. Oh, Rob.

  Go home without Rob? Without knowing what had happened to him? When maybe—

  No. They couldn’t go home. Not now.

  “Okay.”

  They moved through the Dean’s Garden, up the steps. Emily was walking normally again. She had followed this path before, been up these steps. The feel of the route was caught firmly in her body’s memory.

  Mr. Theo would play a few measures for her on the piano and her ear would hear and memorize the notes; then, once the correct fingering had been worked out, her hands would always remember; it was the kinesthetic memory she had talked about to Vicky; it guided her movements in the house and on the streets as well as her fingers in music. It guided her now.

  At the top of the steps her hands moved over the door, found the lock with Dave’s key still stuck in it.

  Had he jammed it on purpose? She was sure he had.

  “Let me open it,” Vicky whispered. “We mustn’t be seen.” Carefully she put her fingers on the wooden lip of the door, pulled it open a crack.

  Emily asked, “Is there any light?”

  “No. It’s pitch dark.”

  “Let me go first, then. I think I can remember it.”

  They slipped in. Vicky could see nothing. She was in Emily’s world of night.

  “Don’t hold me!” Emily whispered fiercely.

  Vicky let go; stopped; listened. She could hear Emily’s feet moving carefully, surely, on the marble floor of the ambulatory.

  Then Emily was caught in the beam of a flashlight.

  Vicky pressed back into the shadows. She heard Dave’s angry voice.

  “Emily!”

  “Dave!”

  Vicky, hidden by the corner of St. James chapel, could not see what was happening, could hear only the noise of feet, a voice saying, “Take the girl, too. C’mon.” Evidently Dave was being silenced. If the boys did not know that Emily was blind they wouldn’t realize that she couldn’t possibly have got there alone. For Vicky to come out and declare her presence would only be for them all to be captured.

  She waited.

  Listened.

  There was the crash of a gate clanging. A sound of feet: where were they going? She thought it was feet descending. She could not tell how many footsteps there were. Emily would have been able to count them. Vicky thought it was the three leather-jacketed boys, plus Dave and Emily: all of them. But she could not be sure. One of the boys might possibly be lying in wait. If she stayed still long enough, if she listened as Emily would listen, then if one of them were still there he would be bound to give himself away, especially since he did not know that Vicky was there, that anybody was listening …

  She waited, straining her ears. It seemed as though she were listening with her entire body. Her skin tingled with effort.

  —I’ll count to a hundred, she thought.—No, that’s not enough. I’ll count to a thousand.

  Darkness.

  Silence.

  Counting to a thousand seemed to stretch into hours, not minutes.

  Nine hundred ninety-eight. Nine hundred ninety-nine. One thousand.

  Slowly she moved her cramped body. She had heard nothing. She felt that she could be quite certain that nobody had been left behind.

  Holding on to the wall, she tiptoed into the ambulatory. If only Canon Tallis were at the Cathedral instead of off somewhere just when he was needed … . If only she could see something … . Then she remembered that she had had a double period in chemistry lab that day, that she had used matches to light the Bunsen burner. With fumbling fingers she unbuttoned her navy-blue overcoat, felt in her blazer pocket. Yes. The matches were there, almost a full packet. She lighted one, and its small light flickered feebly, revealing nothing but darkness.

  Nevertheless, when its tiny flame was gone (she blew it out only when it started to burn her fingers) she was reassured that she was indeed alone. If one of the boys had remained behind then she would have been seen, would have been caught and taken priso
ner.

  A wild idea came to her. She would leave a signal before she left. If Canon Tallis or the Dean returned to the Close and saw light in the Cathedral they would come at once to investigate. She struck another match and went into St. James chapel. Another match took her to the altar, and there she was in luck, because not only were there two great candlesticks on the altar, there was also a taper. Her fingers were trembling so that it took her half a dozen matches to light the taper. Then she lighted the candles. But could anybody from outside see their light? She doubted it.

  Now she could think of nothing except that Canon Tallis must see her signal. Shielding the taper, she went from chapel to chapel, St. James, St. Ambrose, St. Martin of Tours, St. Saviour, St. Columba, St. Boniface, St. Ansgar …

  Now all the candles on the chapel altars were lit. Her signal was a half circle of light which Canon Tallis could not fail to see.

  The only thing left for her to do was to go home to her parents as fast as she could possibly run.

  Seventeen

  Canon Tallis was, at the moment that Vicky was lighting the candles, that Dr. Austin was fruitlessly walking the streets, that Mrs. Austin, Suzy, and the Rabbi were waiting in the music room and Mr. Theo was dialing the Gregory number, standing with the Dean in the smelly hallway of a Harlem tenement house where they had dined well, if more heavily than either of them liked.

  A rat scuttled around a clutter of garbage cans. Despite the clean new high-rise housing developments there were rats in the houses and streets as well as the park walls. Tallis looked at this one broodingly. “But listen, Juan: when evil declares itself in its absolute form, it declares itself as an angel of light. Don’t look for it in places like this. It can come coped and mitred and offering salvation.”

  “No,” the Dean said. “No, Tom.”

  But Tallis continued, quiet, stern. “We underestimate the powers of darkness if we assume that any rank of the created order, even the Apostolic college itself, is safely sealed from them. We totally miss the point of the Fall.”