Two Roads, Again

The Vigil ended at one in the morning.

The Chosen went out into the cold in twos and threes, with their candles burning low, murmuring to one another like people leaving a dinner party. The Rector was helped down the steps by the Deacon, who held him by the elbow. Karl Brandt walked behind them in his new cloak with his head high, smiling at nothing. Silas Ward went last, alone. He walked like a man in a dream.

Cassian sat on the chapel steps.

He did not remember sitting down. He had come out with the others and the cold had struck him in the face, and his knees had given, and now he was on the stone, with his back against a pillar, looking out over the black lawn. The air smelled of frost and smoke. A few stars showed through the cloud. His hands lay on his knees. He looked at them.

Two doors, he thought.

Two boys. One bolted, one closed.

He tried to feel something. He did not.

"Cassian."

He looked up.

Leo stood at the foot of the steps in his heavy coat, with a knitted cap pulled down over his ears. A canvas bag hung from his shoulder. He was very pale, and his hands, which hung at his sides, were trembling, and in the light of the fading candles his eyes were enormous.

"I've been waiting," he said. "Since midnight. I stood by the wall."

"I didn't see you."

"I know. You were looking at the door."

Cassian said nothing.

Leo came up the steps. He sat down beside him, close, not touching. He drew his knees up. For a moment they sat side by side, looking at the lawn, two boys in the cold.

"I'm going," said Leo.

…

"Tonight," he said. "Now. The kitchen gate."

"I thought you couldn't."

"I couldn't."

"Then..."

"I still can't." Leo's voice was low and fast. "I know what it means. I know what they'll do. I've known it since I came." He swallowed. "But I can't stay in this building one more hour. I can't. I stood by that wall and I listened to it sing, and I thought: if I'm here when the next one goes in, I will go with him." He pressed his hands between his knees. "It's all right. I've made my peace. I have somebody I need to go to, and she'll understand."

"Who?"

"I can't say." He smiled painfully. "You know I can't."

The wind moved over the grass.

"It's full," said Leo. "That's the only thing I know for certain. It's been fed, and it's heavy, and it'll sleep till dawn. It won't notice for a few hours. By morning, we could be at the road. By noon, we'll be across the state line. After that..." He shrugged. "After that, I don't know."

"You could be wrong."

"Yes."

"They could find us."

"Yes."

"You could be killing someone."

Leo's face quivered.

"I know that," he said, very quietly. "Don't you think I know that?"

…

They sat in silence a long time.

Cassian looked at the chapel behind him. It rose up against the stars, huge and black, with its single red slit burning. Inside it, behind the door, there was a slow warm sigh, as of a creature digesting. He felt it in the stone beneath him. He felt it in the marrow.

And under it, thin and sweet and distinct, the singing.

Three voices now. He could count them. A treble, a little flat. A tenor, light and pure, with a faint breaking in it that he had not noticed before. And a third, the one he had thought was new, low and warm and wholly familiar, like a voice heard long ago through a wall.

Cassian, sang the treble.

It was not in the words of the hymn.

Cassian. Come and hear.

He put his hands to his ears.

It made no difference. It was inside him. It was in the black scar of his palm, in the hollow of his chest. It was the sound of someone calling from a long way off across a field, and the longer he listened the less he wanted to run from it, and the more he wanted, very badly, to answer.

I left you.

I left you in the dark.

I can't leave you again.

"Cassian." Leo had seized his sleeve. "Don't listen. It's only a voice. It's a trick. It's got Ronald's voice because that's what you're hearing, and it'll give you any voice it likes."

"I know."

"Then come."

He turned his head.

Leo was on his feet, on the step below, with one hand outstretched. The canvas bag hung from his shoulder. His eyes were wet. His face was a small white mask of fear and love and determination. A cold wind lifted his cap-flap and let it fall.

"Come on," he said. "Please. I can't do it by myself."

Cassian looked at the hand.

Beyond it, in the dark, the long road to the kitchen gate lay open, white with frost. Beyond that, the pines, and the track, and the world. And behind him, in the black bulk of the chapel, the singing swelled, and rose, and called.

He drew a breath.