Living as if He Didn't Know

He decided on the second night.

It was not a decision, exactly. There was no moment of resolve, no clean break. It was more like a door that closes slowly in a draft: first an inch, then a hand's breadth, then a click. By the time he noticed the latch had caught, he was already standing in the circle in his silver collar, with the candle flames bending toward the table, singing.

He sang loud.

He had learned that on the first morning, lying wide awake with his hands on his chest. If you sang loud enough, you didn't have to listen. The syllables filled your mouth, your skull, your ribs. There was no room left for meaning. Venite, hospes. Ad mensam nostram. He let them roll out of him in that low, strong, steady voice, and watched the faces round the ring turn and glance at him, half afraid, half grateful, and he gave them nothing.

Don't think. Don't translate. Just sing.

He learned to let his eyes go slack. He learned to let the cold slide over him without flinching. On the second night, and the third, the Rector read, the Deacon answered, the candles guttered blue, the drone swelled from the floor like the engine of a ship. Nothing was demanded of the Hand. Nothing but his voice, and his silence, and his hands folded at his back.

He was good at it.

He had always been good at things that did not require him to feel.

…

On Tuesday evening, they let him call.

The Deacon's office again, and the pencil in the corner. The black telephone on the desk. This time he dialed without hesitating. Dana picked up on the second ring, and her voice came down the wire warm and bright, with the breathless lilt of a woman who has been running.

"Cassian! You called. Oh, I've been waiting. You won't believe the news."

"What news?"

"She's walking." Dana laughed. "Your mom. Just down the hall, with a walker. Twice a day. Dr. Patel says her muscle tone is remarkable. Remarkable! She wants to move her to the rehab wing by the end of next week. And the people from the, from your school's fund, they sent flowers! A huge arrangement. Daniel put it on the windowsill."

"That's great."

"It's more than great. It's a miracle." Her voice dropped. "I keep waiting for the other shoe. But it doesn't come. Every day it's better. I think I was wrong. I think... maybe it really is a good school."

He closed his eyes.

"Maybe," he said.

"Here, Daniel wants a word."

A rustle. A pause. Then a low voice, gruff and shy, a voice he had spoken to only once, in the dark of an ICU.

"Cassian. It's Daniel."

"Hi."

"I just wanted to say..." A cough. "Thank you. For whatever you're doing. Marianne said you wrote her a letter. She keeps it under her pillow." Another cough. "I'm not much of a talker. But I wanted you to know I'm looking after her. As long as I live. You don't need to worry about a thing."

A lump rose in his throat. He swallowed it.

"Thanks, Daniel."

"Anytime, son."

He stood with the receiver pressed to his ear after the line had gone. Son. No one had called him that without a hand raised.

It's worth it, he thought. Look at what it's bought. Look at what it's paid for. Maybe the price isn't so high. Maybe it's a fair price. Everything costs something. You can't have one without the other.

He hung up.

It was only later, lying in the dark in Room 104, that the thing occurred to him. A small, cold, quiet thing, like a coin found in an old coat.

I didn't ask about Edward.

For ten minutes on the telephone, he had listened to Dana and Daniel and his mother's name, and never once asked where his father was. What he was doing. Whether he was in prison, or in a bar, or at the kitchen table in Ottley with his bottle and his radio. Whether he'd come to the hospital. Whether he'd tried.

He had always asked. In September, in October, in every call. Has he been there? Has he hurt her?

He hadn't thought of it. Not once.

He lay still.

It doesn't matter, he told himself. He's gone. He's nothing. He's out of our lives.

And he rolled over, and closed his eyes, and did not ask himself why the question had stopped.

…

The room changed around him.

It happened slowly, over days, like frost forming on a pane. Ronald Fisk, who had never in his life been able to sit near a person without speaking, began to leave when Cassian came in. He would get up from his bed, mutter something about the washroom, slip out the door. At meals he sat at the far end of the table. In class he took a desk by the window. Once, in the corridor, Cassian had come round a corner and found him face to face, and the boy had gone so pale that for an instant Cassian thought he might faint.

"Ronald."

"I, I have to, I'm going to be late."

"Ronald, wait—"

"Please." It was a whisper. The round eyes were enormous. "Please don't."

He had flattened himself against the wall to let Cassian pass. His hands were shaking. He looked at Cassian as one looks at a stranger in a dark alley: not with hatred but with a dazed, frightened wariness, taking in the cloak, the silver, the stiff set of the shoulders.

Cassian walked on.

He felt nothing. That was the odd thing. He waited for a pang, a twist of regret. It did not come. The boy in the corridor was just a boy.

Karl was busier.

Karl, who had never lacked for company, was now never seen alone. He took his meals with Tessa Quill, at a corner of the gray table. After supper they walked in the cloister, heads together, speaking low. At night, when the seventh bell had rung and the lamps gone out, Cassian would lie awake in the dark and hear the soft scrape of a boot, the click of the latch, and the faint draft as the door eased open. Karl went out every night. Cassian knew where.

He didn't ask.

It's none of my business, he told himself. Let him chase his promotion.

And by the window, Leo.

He had not spoken since the night of the first Vigil. He sat on his cot in the long silences, his hands in his lap, and watched Cassian with those dark steady eyes. Whenever Cassian came into the room, the gaze lifted, and followed him, and did not drop. It was not accusation. It was something worse. It was disappointment so profound, so gentle and so absolute, that it seemed to hold no anger at all, only a vast patient sorrow, like that of a man watching a ship he loves go down.

Cassian never met it. He stared at the wall.

He told himself he had not seen.

…

On the third night, he heard it again.

The breathing.

He was in his bed, on his back, with his hands folded and his eyes shut. The hymn had ended an hour ago. The room was quiet. Outside, a thin wind pulled at the shutters. He was almost asleep, floating on the warm black edge of dreams, when something drew him back, a pressure, a sense of being watched.

He lay absolutely still.

Beneath the floor, deep in the ground, a slow vast sound rose and fell.

In. Out.

He had not heard it since the night he put on the cloak. He had thought it was gone, forever stilled, silenced by habit and warm food. But it was there. It had been there all along. It was only that he had stopped listening. And now, in the dead of night, it filled the room with its slow enormous rhythm, and the floor seemed to shiver in time.

In.

Out.

His heart began to pound.

He did the only thing he could think of. He closed his eyes, hard, and began to recite. Not a prayer. He had none. The only thing he knew by heart was the dull drone of Mr. Calloway's classroom, the conjugations he had copied out in September. Amo. Amas. Amat. Amamus. Amatis. Amant. He said them in his head, over and over, in a flat sing-song, a wall of nonsense between himself and the sound.

Amo. Amas. Amat.

In. Out.

Amamus. Amatis. Amant.

In.

He said them until the sound faded. Until dawn crept gray through the window. Until the six o'clock bell rang, and Ronald rose and fled to the washroom, and Karl, with a quick sharp glance, slipped into his boots.

I love. You love. He loves.

He lay in the thin light with his eyes open, and the words went round and round in his skull like a dog on a chain.