The Seventh Night

On the seventh night, they dressed Albert in white.

Cassian was not meant to see it. The Hand's work was finished by the second hour of the first night, and after that the Hand was only a voice in the ring, a pair of folded hands, a body to be counted. But the Deacon had sent him to the vestry that evening for the linen, and as he came through the side door he saw them in the passage: Silas Ward, with a white robe over his arm, and Albert Sterling standing very straight in the middle of the stone floor with his arms held out from his sides, like a child being fitted for a coat.

He wore no glasses.

Cassian had never seen his face without them. It was long and pale and oddly young, with shadows under the eyes and a mouth that did not seem to know what to do. Silas drew the robe over his head. It fell to his ankles, plain, unbleached, soft as flannel. He tied the cord at the waist with his long careful fingers, and his face was kind, and his face was wretched, and he said nothing at all.

Albert looked up and saw Cassian standing in the door.

"Oh," he said. "Hello."

"Hello."

"They said I wouldn't need the glasses." A small unsteady smile. "I can see fine, actually. I think I can see better."

Cassian could not speak.

"It's all right," said Albert. "I'm not frightened. They told me it wouldn't hurt, and I think I believe them." He looked down at the white sleeves. "My mother used to put me in white for church. Did yours?"

"No."

"I hated it. I always got grass on it." He laughed, and the laugh broke in the middle, and he pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth. Silas touched his shoulder, once, and took his hand away.

"Time," said Silas, very low.

Albert nodded. He crossed the floor. At the door he stopped, a pace from Cassian, and for a moment they stood close, the boy in the gray cloak and the boy in the white robe, and Cassian smelled soap and wool and, under it, the faint sweet reek of the chapel.

"I hate you," said Albert, quietly.

"I know."

"I hate you more than I've ever hated anyone. I want you to know that. I'm not going to pretend." He lifted his eyes. They were wet and steady and enormous. "But thank you. For that time. In the hallway. You didn't have to."

"Albert—"

"Nobody else did."

He went out.

…

The Seal walked.

That was the oddest part, the part Cassian could never afterward explain to himself. He had expected a procession, a drag, a hand on the collar. He had expected the boy to be carried or led. But Albert Sterling crossed the lawn on his own two feet, under the black sky and a few cold stars, with the white robe moving around his ankles, and the Chosen fell in behind him two by two with candles in their hands, and he walked up the hill to the chapel with his back as straight as a post.

The wind had dropped. It was the last night of October and the air was very still. Somewhere in the valley a dog was barking, on and on, a mile away, without hope.

The doors of the Hearth stood wide.

Cassian took his place at the table. He did not have to touch the knife tonight. Tonight the Hand only stood. He stood with the silver clasp cold at his throat and watched the ring close, and the floor-rings shine, and the candles on the walls lean all together toward the black arch of the oven.

The Rector read.

Venite, hospes.

They sang. Cassian sang. He sang loud, and low, and without meaning. He filled his skull with it. He thought of nothing. He thought of the number seven. Seven rings, seven nights, seven years.

Mensa parata est.

The drone rose from the floor.

Albert stood in the center of the ring, where the rings of iron made a hollow, and the white robe seemed to give off a pale light of its own. He did not look afraid. His head was a little bent, as if he were listening to something a long way off. His lips were moving.

He's praying, Cassian thought. And then, a moment later, with a lurch: No. He's counting.

One, two, three...

The song climbed. The candles flared blue. The cold came down from the vaulting like a hand and the breath of the Chosen began to smoke in the air. The Rector lifted his arms.

"Hospes, sede," he said. "Ede."

Something moved in the dark of the Hearth.

It was not a shape. It was a thickening, a leaning. The shadow behind the iron door grew deeper and then, without any sound, came forward, a long unhurried tide of black, out over the lip of stone and onto the floor. The light of the candles bent around it. The frost spread out from it across the flags in feathery rays.

Albert stood where he was.

He looked up. His eyes were quite calm. And Cassian, who was watching, saw him smile, a small, shy, surprised smile, the smile of a boy who has been given a gift he hadn't hoped for.

"Oh," said Albert. "It's—"

The dark closed over him like a lid.

…

There was no scream.

Cassian had braced for one. He had braced his whole body, locked his knees, clenched his teeth. He had heard Karl's scream, short as a cut string, in the night. He had heard the roosters. He thought he could endure anything he could hear.

But there was no scream. There was only a sudden stillness, as if a clock had stopped. The candles stood straight up, without a flicker. The drone cut out. The pale robe at the center of the ring wavered for one second, and Cassian saw the slight shape beneath it, a thin boy with his chin up, and then there was nothing in the circle at all but a scatter of frost on the stone.

And a pair of glasses.

They lay at the foot of the table, where they had not been before. Round, steel-rimmed, one lens cracked across. Someone had folded them neatly. Someone had set them down with care.

The tide of dark drew back.

It poured away across the floor and up over the lip of the Hearth and down into the black, and the iron door swung shut with a long, soft, replete click. The candles flickered. The cold went out of the air like water from a basin. And in the nave, the Chosen drew a breath, together, one long shuddering sigh, and began to sing the final hymn as if nothing at all had happened.

Gratias tibi, hospes.

Gratias.

…

Outside, in the frozen yard, a boy was crying.

Cassian heard him from the chapel steps, and knew the sound at once. He went down the hill in the dark behind the others, with the cloak sagging from his shoulders, and found Ronald Fisk on his knees in the dead grass by the wall. He was folded forward, with his forehead on the ground. His whole body shook. He was making a noise that Cassian had never heard from a human throat, a thin raw whooping wail, like an animal in a trap, over and over and over.

"Ronald."

Ronald did not hear him.

"Ronald, get up. They'll see you."

"He was my friend," Ronald said into the grass. "He was my only, he let me, he lent me his pen—"

Cassian crouched. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder. The shoulder was hot and shaking and slick with sweat, and Ronald jerked away from the touch as though it burned.

"Don't," he sobbed. "Don't. Don't touch me. You, you were there. You were in the room. You stood there."

"I know."

"You didn't do anything!"

"I know."

There was nothing else to say. He knelt there with his hand hanging in the cold, and Ronald wept at his feet, and across the yard the Chosen filed away to their beds with their candles bobbing, and nobody turned.

Then there was a hand on his sleeve.

It was small, and cold, and it clutched the gray wool with a grip so tight that Cassian felt the knuckles through the cloth. He looked round. Leo stood beside him in the dark, bareheaded, his black hair blown across his forehead, and his face was a white mask with two black holes for eyes.

He said nothing.

He did not let go.

They stayed like that, the three of them, in the ruined grass, with the stars wheeling slowly overhead and the sound of Ronald's weeping going up and up into the empty sky. At last a bell began to ring from the tower, slow and sweet and solemn, ending the Vigil. And Leo's fingers, very slowly, loosened. And the sleeve was free.

"Thank you," Leo said. Almost inaudible.

"For what?"

"For staying."

…

"A small price, isn't it?"

The voice was close at his shoulder. Cassian did not start. He turned, and the Rector was there, in his fur-collared coat and slippers, with his wire spectacles shining and the unlit pipe in his hand. He had come down the hill behind them, alone. His round pink face was grave and tender in the starlight.

He looked at Ronald. He looked at Leo. He looked at Cassian.

"A small price for so much good," said Rector Kell, "isn't it, child?"

Nobody answered.

The old man sighed. He patted Cassian's arm, once, twice, the way one pats a good dog.

"Come and see me in the morning," he said. "I have something to say to you."

He walked away down the path, and the dark took him.

Cassian stayed kneeling in the grass. In his pocket, the glasses he had picked up from the foot of the table were cold against his thigh. He did not remember picking them up. He only knew that he could not let them be burned.

A small price.

For so much good.

He thought of his mother, walking, in the clean bright corridor. He thought of Daniel's voice. Anytime, son.

And for the first time in seven nights, he did not know whether to hate the old man, or to believe him.