Kneeling

He knelt at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon.

It was harder than he'd expected. Not the act itself. The act was simple: a stiff-legged drop to the Persian rug, a bowed head, hands folded on one knee. It was the other thing. The thing that happened inside, in the dark room behind his ribs, as the knees came down and the rug pressed up through the cloth of his trousers.

It felt like swallowing a razor.

Rector Kell had not asked him to do it. The old man had risen from his leather chair when the Deacon showed him in, with an expression of mild and wary surprise, and had opened his mouth to speak. But Cassian had crossed the study in six quick strides and gone down on his knees before the hearth, and the fire had flickered on his bowed head, and the words had come out of him in a low unsteady voice that he hardly recognized as his own.

"I'm sorry."

Silence.

"I was afraid. I was out of my mind. I thought, I don't know what I thought. I thought the whole world was lying to me." He kept his eyes on the carpet. A thread of red wool, worn pale. "I said things I had no right to say, and I hit the wall, and I... I broke what you gave me. The trust. I'm sorry."

Each word was a nail dragged down the inside of his throat.

"I'm frightened, sir. I've been frightened since the day I came. I'm so tired of it. I just want it to stop." His voice cracked, and the crack was real, and that was the strangest part. He hadn't had to act. "I'll serve. Whatever you ask. I'll do whatever you want. Only please, please don't hurt my mother."

The fire hissed. In the silence he heard his own heart.

Don't look up. Don't look up. Let him see the back of your neck.

…

Rector Kell sat down.

He did it slowly, with a soft grunt, settling into the chair, drawing his slippered feet under him. For a long time he did not speak. He studied the boy on the rug with a face of such mild and complete attention that Cassian felt it like a hand on his skull. The wire spectacles caught the firelight. Behind them, the blue eyes were quite calm.

"Look at me, Cassian."

He looked.

The old man's face was only a few feet away. Round, pink, kindly. A face from a Christmas card. There were small lines at the corners of the eyes, and a faint white stubble along the jaw that the razor had missed. He looked tired. He looked sad. He looked like a man who has been asked to put down a favorite dog, and who has been sitting up all night deciding if it was kind.

He was searching Cassian's face for a lie.

Don't blink.

Cassian held his gaze. He let his eyes fill. He let his lip tremble. He let the old terror come up, the real one, the one he'd carried since the corridor, and he did not push it down. He let it show. It looked, he knew, exactly like surrender.

The silence stretched.

"Hm," said Rector Kell.

He leaned back.

"You know, my boy, I have been in this chair for thirty-six years. In that time, I have watched a great many children come and go. Most of them were frightened." He tapped his fingertips together. "Most of them were angry. A few were brave. A very few were clever. And the cleverest of them, do you know what they all had in common?"

"No, sir."

"They knew when to kneel."

Cassian's breath caught.

"It isn't weakness. People think it is. But the clever child knows that the whole of life is a matter of timing." Kell smiled. "He knows that a man who is standing can be knocked down, and a man who is kneeling can only be helped up. Wise children, Cassian, wise children are very often the ones who kneel at exactly the right moment."

He said it gently. He said it almost with approval.

And there was something under it. A hard, cold, sharp thing, glinting under the warmth like a knife under a cloth. Cassian felt it, and held very still.

He doesn't believe me.

He's going to accept it anyway.

"I think," said Kell slowly, "that you are telling me the truth. Some of it. I think you are afraid, and I think you are tired. And I think you are still very angry, and that you are hiding it rather well." He raised a hand before Cassian could speak. "No. Let me finish. I don't object. Anger is a part of the work. The Guest likes it. It makes the hands warm."

His gaze dropped to Cassian's scabbed knuckles.

"But I will tell you this. I am an old man. I do not have a great deal of time. And I am not in a position to be choosy." He sighed. "I need a Hand. You are the only one I have. So I will take what I'm given, and I will watch it very carefully, and if I am wrong, then I will have been wrong."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me." The blue eyes were mild. "Rise."

Cassian rose.

His knees were stiff. The rug had left a pattern on his trousers. He stood before the fire with his hands at his sides and his heart slamming in his chest, and Kell regarded him a moment, then nodded to the Deacon, who stood in the doorway.

"Miriam. The cloak."

She stepped forward. Over her arm lay a folded gray cloth. She shook it out, silver-collared, heavy, with the faint cedar smell of the vestry cabinet, and laid it across his shoulders. Her cold fingers fastened the clasp at his throat. She did not meet his eyes.

It settled onto him like a weight. Warm, unmistakable. Disquietingly right.

"Your mother," said the Rector.

Cassian's head came up.

"I understand she has been anxious. We told her you were unwell. A touch of fever." Kell glanced at the black telephone on the table. "Miriam will sit with you. Fifteen minutes. If the conversation turns to anything but your health and your studies, she will end it."

"Yes, sir."

"Good boy."

…

The call was short.

He stood in the Deacon's office with the receiver at his ear and the Deacon in her chair in the corner, pencil poised, and listened to the line ring. Dana answered. Dana's voice, tight and breathless, saying "Cassian, thank God, they told us you were sick, are you all right?" And then his mother, very thin, very quiet.

"They said you had a fever."

"I'm better, Mom."

"You sound tired."

"It's nothing. I'm just, it's exam week."

"You're not eating." She said it with sudden fierceness. "I can hear it in your voice. You're not eating, and you're not sleeping, and you won't tell me. I'm your mother, Cassian. Don't lie."

His eyes stung.

"I'm eating," he said. "I swear. They've got great food."

She was silent. He heard her breathing. In the corner, the pencil scratched.

"You'd tell me," she said at last. "If something was wrong."

"I would."

"Promise me."

Don't.

"I promise," said Cassian.

He hung up. He stood with his hand on the receiver until the shaking in his legs stopped.

I've lied to her three times now, he thought. In three weeks.

And I'm going to lie again.

…

He walked back across the cloister in the failing light.

It had stopped raining. The sky was a low pale smear, streaked with violet. Wet slate gleamed on the rooftops. The air smelled of cold iron and leaf rot, and from the kitchen chimney a thin line of smoke rose straight up into the stillness.

At the corner of the east wing, he stopped.

At the far end of the corridor, in the arch of the library door, stood an old man.

He was small and hunched, in a brown vest, with a book clasped against his chest. His white hair stood up from his head like dandelion fluff. He did not come forward. He leaned against the stone as though he might fall, and looked down the long passage at Cassian with an expression so naked and so sorrowful that Cassian's chest tightened.

Pike. Pike, who had sold him a phone for a dollar a minute and torn up the change. Who had sat in the dark with his back turned, saying I'm sorry.

He lifted one hand, a few inches, palm out.

Then he lowered it, and went inside.

Cassian walked on. In the courtyard, beyond the fountain, a slender figure in a gray cloak stood by the stone wall with his hands in his sleeves. He had been standing there for a while. He did not move as Cassian approached. He did not look up.

But as Cassian passed him, he lowered his head.

It was a nod. A single, small, careful dip of the chin. So slight that no one watching would have noticed. It lasted less than a second.

Leo.

He didn't stop. He didn't look back.

The cloak hung warm on his shoulders. The silver clasp was cold against his throat. Ahead, over the black roofs, the chapel stood against the dying sky, and in one of its slits a thin red light had begun to burn.

All right, he thought.

All right.

I'll wear it. I'll sing. I'll do whatever they ask.

I'll play this part until I find a way out.