The Fall

The bell began at six, and it did not stop.

Cassian came awake in a single movement, the way a diver breaks the surface, and lay with his heart hammering and his eyes on the gray square of the window. It was Tuesday. The twenty-seventh of October. The chapel bell was tolling, slow and deep, a long wavering iron note that rolled across the lawn and in at the shutters and went on and on, one stroke, a pause, another. He counted forty before he understood that it was not the hour.

Nobody in Room 104 spoke.

Ronald sat bolt upright in his bed with the blanket gripped to his chin. Karl, in his glasses, had already dressed. Albert lay on his back with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Only Leo's cot was still, and Leo's back was turned, but his shoulders under the blanket had gone rigid as wood.

They went down to the hall in silence.

…

Rector Kell stood at the dais in a black cassock, with his hands folded.

The whole school was assembled. Three hundred boys in rows, in their gray blazers, with their shoes shining and their hair combed flat. The masters stood along the wall. The Deacon was at the Rector's elbow. Her face was drawn and quite calm. She was looking out over their heads at the far wall, at nothing, and her lips moved as if in prayer.

"My dear children," said the Rector.

His voice was sweet and sad and carried to every corner.

"I have a grievous duty. I must tell you that one of our household has been taken from us. Mr. Abner Pike, who has kept our library since before many of you were born, fell last night upon the cellar stairs of Block B. He was alone. He was seen by no one. He was discovered by Ms. Dunmore at about nine o'clock, and though everything was done, he did not survive his injuries."

A rustle ran through the hall like wind through grass.

"He was an old man. His sight was poor and the stairs are steep." Kell sighed. "It is a lesson for us all. We shall hold a short service in the chapel at noon. Those who wish to may pay their respects."

He raised his hand in blessing.

"The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away."

Not the Lord, thought Cassian.

He stood among the others in his rank, with his arms at his sides. His face was perfectly still. He could feel it, the stillness, like a mask he had put on from the inside. He heard the Rector's voice say something more about the library, about arrangements, about a temporary replacement. He heard a boy somewhere behind him begin to cry.

He did not feel anything at all.

…

"I saw them."

It was Ronald. He had caught up with Cassian in the crowd at the door, and his breath was hot and fast against Cassian's ear, and he did not look at him. He walked with his eyes on the floor.

"Last night. I couldn't sleep, so I went to the window. It was after midnight." He swallowed. "I saw them carry him. Ms. Dunmore and a Prefect, with a, with a sheet. They weren't coming from Block B. They came down from the chapel."

"The chapel."

"The side door. You can see it from our window." Ronald's voice cracked. "He was already, he was already wrapped. I don't think he was alive. They put him on the grass, by the path, and then they went back for a stretcher. Why would they go back for a stretcher, if they'd found him at the bottom of the stairs?"

"Don't say that to anyone."

"I'm not stupid!" It was a hiss. "I'm just telling you. Because you went to see him yesterday. I saw you go."

Cassian said nothing.

"I don't want to know," said Ronald. His round face was gray and wet. "I don't want to know what you were doing. I just thought, I thought someone should know that I know."

He turned and walked away fast, with his head down, and was swallowed by the crowd.

…

Through the window on the east stair, Cassian saw the stretcher.

He hadn't meant to look. He had stopped on the landing to let a group of juniors pass, and the long window was beside him, and the sunlight on its lead was bright and thin. Below, on the gravel, a small group had gathered by the wall. Two men in dark coats. A woman in a cardigan. A flat canvas thing on poles, with a sheet over it.

The sheet was white. It had been drawn up over the face.

It was too small. That was what struck him. A grown man laid out under a sheet should have made a long shape, a mountain range. This was a hump, a heap, hardly more than a child. Pike had been so slight. An old man made of paper and string.

I'm more afraid than I've ever been.

Cassian put his hand flat against the glass.

It was a strange thing. He had expected to weep, and he did not. His eyes were quite dry. What came instead was a thing he knew from the plant, from long winter mornings with the carcasses on the hooks. A cold, slow, rising pressure behind the breastbone, a kind of pitiless heat. His hand began to shake. He watched it shake against the pane.

Down on the gravel, Deacon Thorne had come out of the side door.

She stood at the head of the stretcher with her hands folded and her head bent. A black veil hung from her hat. From this height he could see only the line of her shoulders, and the pale crown of her hair, and the long black key at her belt, swinging slightly in the wind.

She held his hand. When his wife died.

She said, I am so sorry.

He was moving.

He did not decide. His body simply went, down the stair, three steps at a time, with his boots striking the stone and the banister flying under his hand. He was thinking of nothing. He was thinking of the side door, and the gravel, and how far it was to her neck.

At the foot of the stair, a hand shot out of the shadow.

…

It closed on his wrist like a vise, and hauled.

He crashed into the angle of the wall between two buttresses. A dark alcove, narrow, unlit, smelling of coal and chalk. He struck out blindly. His fist met a shoulder, a bony, solid shoulder, and the hand on his wrist didn't loosen.

"Stop," said a voice. "Cassian. Stop."

He stopped.

Leo stood before him in the gloom, flattened against the stone, breathing hard. His face was a pale oval. One cheek was red where Cassian's elbow had caught it, and he did not seem to have noticed. His fingers were locked on Cassian's arm, and they were shaking, and he held on.

"Let go of me."

"Not yet."

"She killed him!"

"I know."

"She killed him, and she stood there, she stood there with a veil on—"

"I know." Leo's voice was a whisper, but there was iron in it. "I know. And if you go out there now, you'll be dead by noon. You'll be next to him on the grass." His eyes held Cassian's, black and fierce and wet. "It isn't the time. It isn't. You have to wait."

"For what?"

"For the right night."

Cassian stared at him.

"I can't tell you more. I'm sorry. But I'm begging you. He didn't give you that paper so you could throw it away."

The wind slid through the alcove, stirring the dust. Out on the gravel the bell had stopped, and in the silence the only sound was the scrape of boots as the men lifted the stretcher.

Slowly, slowly, the heat went out of Cassian's arm.

Leo let go.

…

They stood side by side in the dark, not touching, until the footsteps outside had died away.

"You knew," said Cassian at last. "That they would do it."

"No. I hoped they wouldn't."

"But you knew what I'd find."

Leo said nothing for a moment. "I've known since the first week."

"How much?"

"Everything." The word dropped between them like a stone. "Nearly everything. I'll tell you. Soon. I need to be sure you'll keep your head." He took a breath. "I need to be sure you won't do what you were just about to."

Cassian looked at him.

He saw it, then. All at once, as if a shutter had been thrown back. The boy beside him, small and calm and exhausted, with a red mark on his cheek and a cold steady gaze, was no ordinary roommate. He was no frightened child. He was something older than that: a person who had been carrying a great weight alone for a very long time, and had learned to carry it without a sound.

He knows more than anyone in this school.

"All right," said Cassian.

"All right?"

"I'll wait."

Leo nodded. He looked suddenly very young.

They went out of the alcove one at a time, a minute apart, as if they had never met. Cassian walked down the corridor with his hand inside his coat, pressed flat against the folded paper over his heart.

He died for it, he thought. Exactly as he warned.

Then I'll read it. And I'll do what he couldn't.