Butterfly Catchers – Part XVII

Denman turned out to be most instructive. His tendency to drone on about the historical wonders of the cathedral in exhaustive detail was more than compensated for by the ease with which he could be persuaded – with no more than a disarming smile – to reveal details about the boys. By careful questions and sudden enthusiasm for things just out of reach they led Denman higher and higher, up hidden spiral staircases and along narrow spaces crammed between the stones and the sky. They were in the very bones of the cathedral, the ribs and vaulting that kept the whole glorious structure aloft, thick with stone dust and mouse droppings, and the faint stirring as unseen things skittered away from them in the dark. Denman slowed, peering fearfully between the beams or walking with tight jaw along ancient planks laid by some long dead craftsman, then scurrying to keep up with the pair of them. And from time to time, Angelus caught the distant shimmer of childish voices on the air, or peering between sugar-coated pinnacles of stone snatched a glimpse of a fair head flitting in the sunlight far below.

Darla paused by a thin window, peeping out and exclaiming over the view.

‘Those are some of your boys, Denman?’ Angelus asked, looking out whilst careful to keep his head away from the sun.

Denman headed straight for the light and looked out just as a misbowled hoop caused a stout lady to pause in her passage along the footpath and stand with hands on hips, berating the pack of youngsters.

‘Yes. Oh dear, the Dean’s wife! Perhaps I should—’

‘No,’ Angelus said, setting a hand on Denman’s arm and pressing hard enough to make him shift uneasily. Angelus kept his tone enticingly mild and solicitous. ‘Not when we have only just climbed all those steps.’ Angelus gave him an even more disarming smile and tightened his grip to a pincer so hard that Denman gasped and looked in bewilderment between his hold and the beneficent smile. ‘I insist.’

‘W-well, Mr Aurelius, if you think so.’

‘Oh I do think so, Denman. So, these mortise joints were part of the 1452 remodelling?’

‘The, er… the joints? Well that’s a very interesting question, you see, the joints—’ Denman turned slightly, and seemed surprised when Angelus still did not release his arm. ‘The joints…’

‘What happens when a boy’s voice breaks?’

‘I-I beg your pardon?’

Angelus bestowed on him the slow blink of scorn he had perfected on Will, when he had failed to answer a particularly simple question.

‘His voice, yes… Well he has to leave the choir, naturally.’

‘And you?’

‘Yes, he must leave my school too – it is the school for the choristers. Even if it were permitted, the boy’s family would seldom wish to keep him at school. But the cathedral gives him a gift towards his apprenticeship – a guinea for every year he has been in the choir. Many of them go on to do very well.’

Angelus regarded him and wondered how he could stand it. The slow procession of boys through his care, each one snatched away by something beyond his control. He released his hold with a sneer.

‘Do tell me more about the joints.’

‘Er, you must forgive me, sir, but the day is getting on. I really should go down and find out what has happened about… the schoolroom, you understand, and… I must not neglect my duty to the boys.’

‘Oh no, you must not neglect your duty to the boy.’

As they made their way back along the dusty space, Denman was silent, casting occasional glances at Angelus and Darla. They came through a little arch and back into the clear space of the bell-tower, empty save for a single wooden chair and the dangling ropes of the bell themselves.

‘This will do, I think,’ Darla said.

They took him together, one on either side, fastening on, each holding down an arm as Denman struggled. And as Angelus pulled the blood from the schoolmaster’s veins, he almost imagined he could feel Darla pulling too, her sucks in perfect harmony with his own. As Denman weakened, his head starting to slip to one side, Angelus dropped the arm he was holding and reached out with his free hand, to find Darla reaching back for him. Their fingers entwined as they finished and let Denman slip between them.

Darla looked down at the body. ‘What a tedious little man.’

‘I dare say the boys will be very grateful when they find out.’

‘Yes, perhaps we should tell them so they can thank us.’

He laughed, and she slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, pulling out his pocket-knife. She knelt down over Denman, peering at him closely. ‘He needs some Gothic decoration, I think.’ And with her pretty little tongue just peeking out between her teeth in concentration she slipped the knife across Denman’s throat, running a jagged red line through the bite marks, joining his to hers.

‘What shall we do now?’

Their footsteps were light on the stone of the staircase as they descended. The cathedral was fuller now, little clumps of people here and there, lost in their own affairs – a gentleman stabbing a finger at some feature of the stonework for the benefit of two ladies accompanying him; a fat man crouching over a tomb; a young woman on a pew, head bowed; another flicking through a leaflet.

‘Observe the delicate soaring of the tracery of the perpendicular period,’ the gentleman enthused.

There was something in the air of this place. Not a scent – not something solid and real and understandable. He could smell the stone, cold and strong, and the wax of candles and polish. The dank sweat of the fat man. The boredom of the young ladies. The excitement of the gentleman. But it wasn’t that. And for the first time it made him feel excited, not just defiant but triumphant.

They slipped along the aisle, the bright brasses of the city’s worthies under their feet, walking east. They reached the end of the aisle, and up three steps he could see the space widening out into the transept and a speckling of tombs. The whole place was shaped like a cross, but it was just a glorified graveyard, a collection of indoor-bone-boxes, nothing more.

‘Where is the crypt?’ Darla wondered.

‘The crypt?’

‘Or do you think that’s maybe a little… obvious, darling?’

The crypt. Right under the high alter. The very earth where the saint had been interred. The air would be dank with the years of history, of worship, of bones. It would be dark, and solitary, and he could paint a portrait on the whitewashed walls with blood. The boy would never see it, but they would find it, and they would look at the boy and whisper.

‘On the contrary, I think that is an excellent idea.’

And he felt himself growl inside, a roar of defiance welling up as they moved, under the stare of the great crucifix, to the entrance.

The door was wide, set deep in the stone, the step at its base worn deep by the tread of pilgrim’s feet, and it swung open in front of them as if he had willed it to do so. And he stared into the astonished eyes of Will.

‘Bloody hell.’

Angelus dropped Darla’s hand.

Will’s sidestep and turn was a perfect example of the pivot Angelus had struggled to teach him. His crashing into a stout clergyman and sending him sprawling on the flagstones was less orthodox, but Will scrabbled to his feet and made a respectable recovery, dawdling only for a second to snarl. Angelus cleared the flailing man with one bound and followed, the boom of their feet down the aisle a pounding percussion.

Will was fast. Even with muscles that by rights should still be a symphony of aches he was fast. Light on his feet and agile enough to dodge between the pillars sharply, leap over a sleeping stone knight and cross straight over the nave. Angelus crashed on one pillar further, jumped the much higher table tomb and put on a spurt of speed towards the west door. The angles were such that he would cut Will off a few yards short of it.

Speed and quick-witted manoeuvring were vital skills for a fledgling and Angelus had always encouraged them in Will. It was with a mixture of pride and fury that he saw Will stamp one foot to a stop, turn, and dart away from the direction of the door and back up the far aisle. Angelus half fell over trying to match the acuteness of the turn, grabbed a passing tourist as a pivot and followed. Will had gained about ten yards. The continuo of voices shouting at them was getting louder. Will turned the corner into the transept and was out of sight.

High overhead the cathedral clock began to toll.

They were in a cathedral, isolated in a sea of sunshine, how had Will even got there at all? Who had let him out? Angelus rounded the corner and discovered that Will had sacrificed his lead, was stuck in the door out of the transept and was apparently struggling with Drusilla. Will seemed to be trying to simultaneously push her through the door and shield her from sight with his body.

As Angelus ran forward, his eyes met Will’s again.

Will’s face was set, determined, appropriately scared; then he got Dru through the door, letting the heavy oak slam behind them.

Angelus reached the door and wrenched it open.

Hand in hand, Will and Dru were running down the high vaulted corridor edging the great cloister, and, with a bravado that took Angelus’s breath away, Will had chosen the south-facing side, where the sun streaked through the archways in broad, defiant stripes. Drusilla was laughing.

Angelus watched in horror as his two fledges ran between each narrow band of shade. Will on the southern side was shielding Dru to some extent and his clothes were smouldering, smoke trailing from his hair. He’d come out without his good coat, as usual.

Angelus cursed again and headed down the other side of the cloister. The door at the far end of the southern cloister led straight out onto the sunlit close, so Will must have some other goal in mind, but what or why Angelus couldn’t imagine. With a flat stretch of good stone to run on and no tourists or clergy to impede his way he ran as fast as he could run. The cloister was exactly square – as Angelus turned the corner he could see diagonally across from him that Will and Dru had turned theirs. They were all running towards one another now, heading, as far as Angelus could see, for a collision somewhere near the south-west corner. And he wondered what Will’s plan was, and discovered with a small pang of surprise that he desperately hoped Will did have one.

Then just short of the corner, Will stopped, snatching Dru back as she carried on past him so that for a second they spun together at arms length as if they were dancing, then she twirled into his arms with a laugh. There was another door. Will had it open and they were through. With a loud click, Angelus heard the sound of a bolt being shot.

It took Angelus another twenty steps to reach the door, slowing down to a steady walk. He was tallying up in his mind – offsetting the skill of Will’s evasions, the quick-witted planning at speed, his care of Dru, against the heedless recklessness of taking the northern side, his attracting attention, his being there at all. From beyond the door Angelus could hear shouting. High, boyish yells, and as Angelus raised his hand to the wood he saw pinned to it a small white card with neatly rounded letters: Choir School – please be quiet.