Butterfly Catchers – Part XV

As the sky bled primrose yellow they used the last long shadows cast by the dawn to move towards the cathedral itself, a wide black zone of safety leading across the close as somewhere at the east end the rising sun set the stones on fire. Darla looked up at the great west door as they went under its shadow, seeing the carving of the pelican, ripping its breast open to feed great drops of blood to its young. She tipped her head to one side, then nodded.

‘I had forgotten that,’ she said.

Between the close and their house a broad band of unbroken daylight now stretched, an impassable barrier, into which, ten minutes later, stepped James.

In the daylight his hair shone as he skipped along, his school cap spun on one finger, the other hand trailing along the iron railings that kept the hoi-polloi from desecrating the dean’s lawn. His head was hanging, the locks of golden hair kissing at his eyes. The cold air or a proper scrub with icy water and honest soap had brought a pretty blush to his cheeks. Then he looked up as a couple of other boys appeared, running into the close, and he smiled.

‘Ah,’ Darla said, and she gave Angelus’s hand a little squeeze.

The three choirboys came together, running across the black shadow from the cathedral and out into the sunshine again on the other side. Then as they approached the wicket into the cloister their steps slowed and all three adopted expressions of meek angelic perfection as they filed in.

A stooped ancient in respectable brown touched his hat to Angelus and Darla with a polite wheeze as he limped past and applied a huge key to the great west door.

‘Excuse me, but where do they go, the boys?’ Darla asked, pointing as a couple more ran up. ‘Surely it is too early for their schooling.’

‘They be the quiresters, ma’am.’

‘The what?’

‘The quiresters.’

‘The choristers?’

‘Ay sir, the quiresters. The boys of the quire.’ He gave them a bright eyed nod as if worried that this information was unclear.’

‘We know that. But where do they go?’

‘Why they be a going to practice, sir,’ the old fool looked puzzled, as if unsure why Angelus and Darla would not know this. ‘Every morning, summer or winter.’ He nodded, bobbing his head like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Precious cold it were some mornings, but still we had to sing. Sung like little angels we did.’ He chuckled to himself and rubbed his hands together, turning back to the lock. ‘Little angels.’

‘You were a chorister?’

‘Ar, sir. Back in the old king’s time. Morning Prayer and Evensong, every day for five year. Te Deum, Jubilate and the Nunc.’ And he tipped his wrinkled throat back and warbled ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word…’ Then broke off into a paroxysm of coughing and wheezing as he thumped his chest.

Darla flinched.

‘And after their practice, what then?’ Angelus demanded. ‘Does the church educate them in anything except music?’ And then when the clown stared at him with dropped jaw, he snapped ‘Do they get taught their letters anywhere?’

‘Ar, sir.’

Angelus pronounced each word very clearly. ‘Do you know where?’

‘Ar, sir.’

Angelus sighed, wished himself patience, and reached towards his waistcoat pocket where he kept his small change. The bright eyes followed this movement and the old fool shuffled a step closer, bringing with him a waft of boiled cabbage.

‘Where?’

‘St Michael’s School, sir.’

Angelus produced a crown and held it in front of the man’s face. ‘Where is St Michael’s School?’

‘Why, bless you, tis up in St Michael’s tower, the way up be just over there.’ He gestured inside as he slowly pushed the door open. ‘I could show you, sir, for I must climb up and unlock and set everything right for the lessons, only first I must see to the clock or it will be half a minute slow again and the Dean will have a thing to say about it.’

‘The clock, of course.’

‘Ar, sir. And a weary climb it be up that long stair. Not as bad as the stair to the spire, mind, but steep enough for my old legs. And then the school stair afterwards.’

Angelus gave him a wolfish grin. ‘Age is a disagreeable thing.’ And he dropped the coin back into his pocket and turned his back on the old man, holding his arm out for Darla. They strolled through the door and into the cathedral, looking up at the fan vaulting impossibly high overhead, and discussing the clusters of imps and angels clawing out from the pillar-tops that stared down at them with white, limestone eyes.

The old man waited a little while, wheezing, then stamped away with a mutter and an outraged jingle of his keys.

Angelus continued the charade until the old man was out of earshot then dropped Darla’s arm and whilst she stood to one side, keeping watch, he pulled at the arched wooden door in the corner of the nave until he heard the shriek and clunk as the pawls of the ancient iron lock snapped. It only took them a second to be up the spiral stair and into the schoolroom.

It was a pleasant space, easily large enough for a schoolroom for a dozen or so boys. Small windows looked out between the curlicues and statuary of the west front showing views across the close and over the rooftops to the water meadows beyond. Once the sun had moved round only a little way the schoolroom would be filled with light. Darla drifted between the wooden forms, idly picking up an abandoned slate, running her finger about the rim of a china ink-pot. Angelus pulled open the chalky drawer of the master’s high desk to discover a withered apple and a book of Shelley’s love poems.

‘It’s all so very human,’ Darla said.

He grinned at her, then perched himself on the front desk, one boot up on the lid, back resting comfortably against the scarred stone of the wall where hundreds of boys had carved their names. He held his arms out for her and she came with a giggle, jumped onto his knee and snuggled back against his chest. He nuzzled her neck and they waited until the wheezing on the stairs heralded the return of the aged sacristan.

The old man stopped dead in the doorway, his mouth a perfect O.

‘Hello,’ Angelus said.

‘You broke the lock.’ The man seemed ludicrously more confused than outraged. The little drops of spit or sweat in the matted clumps of his whiskers shook as he spoke. ‘Over hundred year old, that lock be.’

‘Then it was high time it was changed.’

‘You broke the lock,’ the man said in bewilderment. ‘Why’d you want to do that, then? I’d’ve let you in, had you asked. Tis only a schoolroom. There were no need to break the lock.’

Angelus smiled again and reached once more for his pocket. ‘Yes, but we didn’t want to wait.’

‘The Dean will have to be told. There’ll be a mort of trouble too.’

‘Mort,’ Darla said. ‘What a nice word.’

He threw his knife and the man’s O of a mouth clamped around the handle as if it were an ebony sausage he were swallowing. Then his hands flew upwards, fingernails scrabbling at the stone as he toppled, scoring a little set of scratches low down, where probably nobody would ever notice them.

Angelus went to retrieve his knife, sucking up the bloody foam that bubbled into the man’s mouth to serve as breakfast and ensure it didn’t spill about and make a mess. Darla came over and they exchanged the blood between them in another kiss. Then he cheerfully picked up the corpse and carried it over to the master’s desk where he propped it. Darla brought the master’s gown over and draped it round the old man’s shoulders, whilst he set the mortar-board at a jaunty angle over one eye. They considered the composition for a second then he took out the apple from the desk and jammed it in the man’s jaw.

‘Very fine,’ Darla said. ‘Now, I think you should show me the cathedral.’

‘Of course, my dear. It will be my pleasure.’

As they tripped back down the stairs he heard the thud as the apple fell out and rolled away across the floor, but he couldn’t be bothered to go back up and replace it.