The friction whistle of raincoat fabric against brick rose as he fell. He impacted with the larger drain far below and spilled into it, but the slope was too minimal for him to travel farther.
For perhaps a minute, I stood shuddering, forcing back my tears and steeling myself for the descent.
From elsewhere in the crypt, I heard footsteps on stone and then voices echoing along the groin vaults.
43
As our strange courtship required, if it was a courtship, the dining area was barely lighted: three candles in blue-glass cups on a sideboard, six others at more distance in the open kitchen, none upon the table at which we ate. I had taken off my ski mask but not my jacket, and I ate with my hood still up.
A simple glass chandelier hung by a chain above us, left dark in consideration of me, but its chrome arms were faintly traced by fluttery reflections of the blue candlelight, and the small glass bowls containing its light bulbs took the blue glow and made rings of it around their rims. Our wineglasses and the flatware likewise glimmered, and on the wall behind the sideboard, soft blue light quivered as the flames danced.
She had prepared crab cakes with a slaw of peppers and cabbage, and tiny potatoes sautéed first and then roasted in the oven. All of it was delicious, and I couldn’t tell what had been frozen and what was fresh.
I asked, “Who might be the partner that Telford mentioned?”
“I have no way of knowing. He lies as easily as he breathes, so there might not be any partner.”
“I think there is one.”
After a silence, Gwyneth said, “So do I.”
“What did he mean — your guardian is on a leash?”
“We’re going to meet him later. Then you’ll know.”
“You said even he doesn’t know about this place.”
“He doesn’t. We’re going out again to meet him.”
“Is that safe?”
“Not entirely. But it’s necessary.”
I liked the pinot grigio. I’d never tasted it before. I liked the shadow of her at the farther end of the table, too, her hands like the graceful hands of a mermaid in a pale-blue dream.
“He sounds entirely wicked,” I said.
She laughed softly. “I won’t disagree.”
“Five years ago, when he …”
When I hesitated, she completed my question for me. “When he tried to rape me?”
“You were only thirteen. You said you lived secluded on the top floor of your father’s house then.”
“Do you have a worst night of your life, Addison?”
I thought of Father shot and bludgeoned on Cathedral Hill. “Yes. I have a worst night.”
“Me too. I was living alone on the fourth floor of my father’s house when Telford came after me, but Daddy was murdered minutes before, in the kitchen.”
I said, “I didn’t realize both in the same night.”
A sharp knocking came from overhead, three pairs of quick but not heavy raps, like a percussionist in an orchestra striking a hollow wood block with a small wooden hammer.
I’ve never known the Clears to make a sound, but looking up at the ceiling, I said, “Someone on the roof?”
“There’s an attic. But it’s nothing. Probably just a water line.”
The sound came again: rap-rap, rap-rap, rap-rap. She said, “Probably just air in the water pipes.”
Rap-rap, rap-rap, rap-rap.
“Always six raps in pairs? How can that be?”
“It’s not always the same. Sometimes a rap or two, sometimes a long stutter of them. Nothing to worry about. Just air in the pipes. How are the crab cakes?”
In the gloom, her face was no more revealed to me than mine was visible to her.
“Delicious. You’re quite a cook.”
“I’m quite a reheater.”
I picked up my wineglass, hesitated, waiting for another spate of knocking, which did not come.
After a sip of wine, I said, “Gwyneth?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so happy to be here.”
“I’m happy, too,” she said. “My life has always been so limited. But it doesn’t feel limited right now.”
44
Six years earlier, in the crypt of the cathedral, standing by the open drain, in the farthest corner from the entrance, I dared not move because the slightest sound would resonate along the curves of the groin vaults and announce my presence with a choir of echoes.
The four chambers were open to one another, delineated only by the colonnades. Although sound traveled well, getting a clear line of sight to any point would be difficult. I was reminded of the pine barrens through which I’d made my way as a boy, before coming to the church by the river. Those trees, with their lowest limbs high above my head and no underbrush competing with them, were so plentiful that I’d had no long views, and I had none here, especially by the lambent light of the torchères and through the pooling shadows.
I could have gone into the shaft, but when they came to see the cause of the noise, the manhole cover would be lying beside the hole. They would know someone other than a city worker came and went by this route, and I would never be able to return here, where sometimes in the deep of night I found a certain peace.
Whoever they might be, there were two of them. If the tone of their conversation was not conspiratorial, it was at least that of men with opinions that they evidently kept secret between them.
“The announcement won’t be for five days, but the word has been received. It’s been decided.”
“Please tell me it’s not Wallache.”
“But it is.”
“They’ve all gone mad.”
“Say nothing to anyone or I’m toast. This is übersecret.”
“But they must know—he must know — Wallache’s history?”
“They seem to believe Wallache’s version of it.”
“He’s been lucky not to be exposed like the others.”
“Perhaps it’s more than luck.”
“You know my feelings in that regard.”
“And yet it’s known. It’s known.”
“It’s not known widely.”
“We have two duties now. One to Wallache, which we should fulfill only to the minimum possible, and one to what is right.”
“There are others who feel as we do. Many others.”
“Yes, but that’s cold comfort when such a decision has been made and you know there’s a long darkness coming down.”
As suddenly as they had arrived, they departed.
I couldn’t make much sense of what they had said, and at the time I didn’t have any interest in puzzling through the meaning of it. With Father dead, the seams of my life were split, and I didn’t believe that I could sew them up again. My entire life was a secret, and the small secrets of others seemed to be none of my business.
Alone, I went into the hole, from the crypt to what lay far beneath it, as if I were of the dead yet tasked with my own burial. Holding fast to a rung with my left hand, I secured myself to another with the six-inch tether that I had long ago stitched securely to the belt of my raincoat. That short safety line ended in a large snap link that I inspected often enough to entrust my life to it. Feet on a lower rung, tethered at the waist, I had both hands free to use the prybar/hook to snare the overhanging drain lid and muscle it into place, though with considerable noise.
After releasing the tether, I descended in darkness so thick that I breathed it in with the cool air. Although it was nothing but imagination, I felt that the inhaled darkness was not expelled with the exhaled breath.