Afterward, for the third time, I phoned Bishop.
“We’re getting closer,” I announced in my spidery voice.
“Who are you?” He was alert this time, with a new shrillness to his tone. “What do you want, for God’s sake?”
Click.
Then home, and bed, for the next four hours.
This time, I dreamed.
8
“What’s the matter, Pinchbeck?”
August 23rd; the eve of my thirteenth birthday. We were standing in front of the school Portcullis, a pretentious little add-on from the nineteenth century, which marks the entrance to the Library and the Chapel Gate. It was my favorite part of the school, straight from the pages of a Walter Scott novel, with the school crest in red and gilt above the school motto (quite a recent addition, but a word or two of Latin speaks volumes to the fee-paying parents). Audere, agere, auferre.
Leon grinned at me, his hair hanging disreputably in his eyes. “Admit it, Queenie,” he said in a mocking tone. “Looks a lot higher from down here, doesn’t it?”
I shrugged. His teasing was harmless enough for the moment, but I could read the signs. If I weakened, if I seemed in the least bit annoyed at his use of that silly nickname, then he would strike with the full force of his sarcasm and contempt.
“It’s a long way up,” I said carelessly. “But I’ve been there before. It’s easy when you know how.”
“Really?” I could see he didn’t believe me. “Show me, then.”
I didn’t want to. My father’s passkeys were a secret I had never meant to reveal to anyone, not even (and perhaps especially not) Leon. But still I could feel them, deep in my jeans pocket, daring me to say it, to share it, to cross that final, forbidden line.
Leon was watching me like a housecat who isn’t sure whether he wants to play with the mouse or unravel its guts. I had a sudden, overpowering memory of him in the garden with Francesca, one hand laid casually over one of hers, his skin tawny-green in the dappled shade. No wonder he loved her. How could I possibly compete? She had shared something with him, a secret, a thing of power that I could never hope to duplicate.
Or maybe now, I could.
“Wow.” Leon’s eyes widened as he saw the keys. “Where did you get those?”
“Nicked them,” I said. “Off Big John’s desk, at the end of term.” In spite of myself, I grinned at the look on my friend’s face. “Had them copied at the key place at lunchtime, them put them back right where I found them.” That was mostly true; I’d had it done just after that last disaster, while my father lay despondent and blind drunk in his bedroom. “Slack bastard never noticed.”
Now Leon was watching me with a new light in his eyes. It was admiring, but it made me a little uneasy too. “Well, well,” he said at last. “And there I was thinking you were just another little Lower School squirt with no ideas and no balls. And you never told anyone?”
I shook my head.
“Well, good for you,” said Leon softly, and slowly his face lit with his tenderest, most captivating smile. “It’s our secret, then.”
There is something ultimately magical in the sharing of secrets. I felt it then, as I showed Leon around my empire, in spite of the accompanying pang of regret. The passageways and alcoves, the hidden rooftops and secret cellars of St. Oswald’s were no longer mine. Now they belonged to Leon as well.
We went out via a window on the Upper Corridor. I had already turned off the burglar alarm in our part of the school before locking the door carefully behind us. It was late; eleven o’clock at least, and my father’s rounds were long finished. No one would come at this time. No one would suspect our presence.
The window gave onto the Library roof. I climbed out with practiced ease; grinning, Leon followed. Here was a gentle slope of thick, mossy stone tiles, pitching down to a deep, lead-lined gutter. There was a walkway all around this gutter, designed so that a Porter might follow it with a broom, removing the accumulated leaves and detritus, although my father’s fear of heights meant that he had never attempted this. As far as I could tell he had never even checked the leadwork, and as a result the gutters were filled with silt and debris.
I looked up. The moon was nearly full, magical against a purple-brown sky. From time to time little clouds smudged across it, but it was still bright enough to underline every chimney, every gutter and slate in indigo ink. Behind me, I heard Leon draw a long, wavering breath. “Wow!”
I looked down; far beneath me I could see the gatehouse, all lit up like a Christmas lantern. My father would be there, watching TV perhaps, or doing press-ups in front of the mirror. He didn’t seem to mind my being out at night; it had been months since he had questioned where I went and with whom.
“Wow,” repeated Leon.
I grinned, feeling absurdly proud, as if I had built it all myself. I grabbed hold of a climbing rope that I had strung into place a few months before, and hoisted myself up onto the ridge. The chimneys towered over me like kings, their heavy crowns black against the sky. Above them, the stars.
“Come on!”
I teetered, arms spread, gathering in the night. For a second I felt as if I could step right out into the spangled air and fly, like Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys.
“Come on!”
Slowly, Leon followed me. Moonlight made ghosts of both of us. His face was pale and blank—a child’s face of wonder. “Wow.”
“That’s not all.”
Emboldened by success, I led him onto the walkway; a broad path inked by shadows. I held his hand; he did not question it but followed me, docile, one arm held out across the tightrope space. Twice I warned him; a loose stone here, a broken ladder there.
“Just how long have you been coming here, anyway?”
“A while.”
“Jesus.”
“D’you like it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
After half an hour of climbing and scrambling, we stopped to rest on the flat, broad parapet above the Chapel roof. The heavy stone slates kept the day’s heat, and even now they were still warm. We lay on the parapet, gargoyles at our feet. Leon produced a pack of cigarettes, and we shared one, watching the town, spread out like a blanket of lights.
“This is amazing. I can’t believe you never said.”
“Told you now, haven’t I?”
“Hm.”
He was lying beside me; hands tucked behind his head. One elbow touched mine; I could feel its pressure, like a point of heat.
“Imagine having sex up here,” he said. “You could stay all night if you wanted to, and no one would ever know.” I thought his tone was slightly reproachful; imagining nights with lovely Francesca in the shadow of the rooftop kings.
“I guess.”
I didn’t want to think of that—of them. The knowledge—like an express train—passed silently between us. His closeness was unbearable; it itched like a nettle rash. I could smell his sweat and the cigarette smoke and the slightly oily, musky scent of his too-long hair. He was staring up at the sky, his eyes brimful of stars.
Slyly I put out my hand; felt his shoulder in five little pinpoints of heat at my fingertips. Leon did not react. Slowly I opened my hand; my hand trespassed across his sleeve, his arm, his chest. I was not thinking; my hand seemed divorced from my body.
“Do you miss her? Francesca, I mean?” My voice trembled, catching at the end of the phrase in an involuntary squeak.
Leon grinned. His own voice had broken months before, and he loved to tease me about my immaturity. “Aw, Pinchbeck. You’re such a kid.”