The Star in the Roof

"There comes a moment after the danger has passed when the body, which has been holding itself together with a fist, opens its hand."

He came down the column the way a drowned man comes down a river: not by choice, but by the slow and inevitable decision of the water.

She watched him do it with her heart in her throat. He had let go the spur of rock with his good arm, and hung there for a moment by his knees, with his head flung back and his eyes closed. Then his knees gave. He slid. He came down in a long, scraping, uncontrolled rush, the crystal tearing at his clothes, his boots drumming against the stone, his hands scrabbling for a hold that was not there.

"Roderick!"

He hit the floor at the foot of the column with a grunt that she felt in her own ribs. He rolled. He lay on his back in the swirling fog with his arms flung out and the dying lamplight on his face. He did not move.

She was beside him before she knew she had left the table.

"Roderick. Roderick."

His eyes opened.

They were red-rimmed and glazed, and he looked at her out of them with the vague amazement of a man who has been awakened in a strange room. His mask had slipped. The linen on his hands was in ribbons. The left shoulder was a black wet ruin, and the shirt-sleeve had stuck to it, and when she touched it he gave a short soft cry.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. Lie still."

"Did it—"

"It broke."

"Did it draw?"

"It's drawing now." She was sobbing, and laughing, and wiping her face. "Listen. Can you hear? It's like a mill."

He listened.

The sound filled the vault, a deep steady rushing, like wind through a keyhole, like a river in a pipe. The fog was streaming up through the hole in the roof in a single white funnel. The yellow haze had gone from the floor. The lamps, which had guttered, had steadied, and burned in their jars with a clean strong flame. And the air, which had been a heavy sickly soup, was cold and thin and sharp, full of the smell of the sea.

"It worked," said Roderick.

"It worked."

"You said it would."

"I said it might." She gripped his hand. "Don't you ever do that again."

"I'll try."

"I mean it."

"I know." His mouth twitched. He lay for a moment looking up at the roof, at the little black circle ringed with broken glass, and the star beyond it, small and clear and remote. "That's the first star I've seen in nine days."

"There is another," said Thalessa, "behind the first."

She was right. A second had swum into view. And a third.

"The sky has cleared," said Roderick. "The storm's over."

"Yes."

"We've been under here the whole night."

"Not quite the whole." She wiped her eyes with her wrist. "It's midnight, or a little after. The tide will turn within the hour."

"Then it's done."

"Not done. Just survivable." She put a hand under his head. "Don't move. I'm going to see to you."

…

She cleaned the shoulder as best she could with brandy and a strip of tablecloth. It was a dreadful job. The stitches had torn out in a long ragged line, and the flesh round them was swollen and hot and oozing. She bound it tight, and made a sling of the Duke's shawl, and fed him sips of brandy from the flask, and made him lie flat with his feet on a coat. He submitted with the docility of a man who has no more to give.

Vespera lay on the table.

She had been moved to the long white cloth, among the lamps, with a folded coat under her head and the damp compress on her eyes. She was awake. Her breath came in short shallow rasps, but it came, and her color was better, a dull livid pink instead of the dreadful blue. She lay very still. Now and then her lips moved.

"What does she say?" said Roderick.

"She's counting."

"Counting what?"

"The lamps." Thalessa bent over her. "Is that right? Are you counting the lamps?"

"I can feel them," the girl whispered. "I can feel the warmth. On my face. All twenty-one." A pause. "They're still lit."

"Yes."

"Even the last."

"Especially the last."

A long shuddering breath. "I thought they would go out."

"They did not."

"I thought the gas would put them out."

"The gas does not extinguish a flame, at that strength. It only suffocates a person. It's rather insulting." Thalessa's mouth shook. "Your brother's lamps outlived the lot of us."

Vespera's lip trembled.

Then she turned her head on the folded coat, and Thalessa saw the wet cloth slip a little, and beneath it, for a moment, the gray eyes, swollen and red and streaming. They were focused on nothing. But they were seeking. They moved slowly across the roof and the lamps and the drifting remnants of fog, and found, at last, the small clear star.

"Oh," she said.

"What?"

"It's out."

"What is?"

"The sky." Her voice was soft and wondering. "I haven't seen it in four years. Not really. I've looked past it. I've looked at the ground, and the walls, and the floor. But it's there. It's been there the whole time." She drew a breath that cracked. "I'm so tired of looking at the floor."

Nobody answered.

She lay with her face turned to the roof and the star, and the tears slid out from under her swollen lids and ran down into her hair. Thalessa sat down beside her on the table and took one thin hand in both of her own. It was cold. It closed on hers with surprising strength.

"I was going to die," said Vespera.

"I know."

"I really was. I wanted to." She shut her eyes. "And now I'm lying here, with someone holding my hand, and I find that I'm glad. And I don't know what to do with it."

"You don't have to do anything."

"I'm going to hang."

"Perhaps."

"I'll be sorry."

"Yes."

"But I'll be sorry then. Not now." The ghost of a smile. "It's a strange thing, to be given an hour you hadn't expected."

"It is," said Thalessa, "the only kind that's worth anything."

…

Roderick had fallen asleep.

She did not notice at first. He lay on the stone floor beside the table with his head on the Duke's coat, his bandaged hand on his chest, breathing slowly and evenly, his lips slightly parted. His face in the lamplight was gray and drawn, scored with lines of exhaustion. But it was peaceful. He looked like a man who has run a long way, and arrived, and can no longer remember where.

She drew a rug over him. She sat on the floor beside him with her back against the table leg and her knees drawn up, and she took out her notebook. She had no idea why. She opened it to a clean page and looked at it for some time. The lamplight lay on the paper in a yellow patch.

Sulfur dioxide, she wrote. Neutralized by ammonia. Vented by shaft.

Subject A (female, 20): pulmonary edema, corneal burn. Recovering.

Subject B (male, 35): lacerations, torn stitches, exhaustion. Recovering.

Subject C (female, 27)—

She stopped.

She looked at the page for a long time. The pen hung in her hand. At last, very slowly, she wrote:

Subject C: well.

She looked at it. It seemed to her a very odd word. She had not used it in years.

She crossed it out. She wrote instead, in a hand that was not quite steady:

Subject C: alive.

And she laid down the pen, and put her head on her knees, and let the night go by.

…

It was Vespera who heard it first.

"Listen," she said.

Thalessa lifted her head.

"What?"

"Up there. In the shaft." The girl had propped herself on one elbow, with her swollen eyes turned toward the roof. "A voice."

She listened.

At first she heard only the roar of the draft, the thin steady rush of wind in the stone. Then, under it, faint and cracked and desperately high, a sound like a bird's. It came again.

"... ello! Hello down there! Is anyone down there? Miss? Miss Vespera?"

Thalessa was on her feet.

"Ned," said Vespera, in a whisper. "It's Ned."

"The sweep?"

"I told him to go to the village. I gave him a note." Her whole face had changed. "He came back. Oh, the little fool. He came back."

Thalessa seized the iron foot of the lamp-stand, cast aside on the floor, and struck it against the table. Once, twice, three times, with a clash that rang through the vault. She cupped her hands round her mouth.

"NED!" she shouted. "NED! WE'RE DOWN HERE!"

There was a silence.

Then a yell, wild, shrill, delirious with joy, came pouring down the shaft, bouncing from wall to wall like a ball.

"MISS! MISS! I'LL FETCH A ROPE!"