Sacrament

'I'm none of those things,' Will said.

'Oh, but there's a spirit moves in you,' Rukenau said. 'An animal of some kind, is it?'

'Why don't you come down and see for yourself?'

'I could never do that.'

'Why not?'

'I've told you. The House is an atrocity. I have sworn I will not set foot on it. Ever again.'

'But you're the one who had it built.'

'How is it that you know so much?' Rukenau said. 'Did you get all this from Jacob? Because let me tell you, if you did, he knows less than he thinks.'

'I'll tell you everything I know, and where I learned it,' Will said. 'But first-'

Rukenau looked lazily at Ted. 'Yes, yes, his wretched wife. Look at me, Theodore. That's better. Are you sure you want to leave my employ? I mean, is it such a burden to fetch me a little fruit or a little fish?'

'I thought you told me you never left the House?' Will said to Ted.

'Oh he doesn't go out to get it,' Rukenau said. 'He goes in, don't you Theodore? He goes where his wife has gone; or as close as he dares.'

Will was confounded by this, but he did his best to keep the bewilderment from his face. 'If you really want to leave,' Rukenau went on, 'I will make no objection. But I'm warning you, Theodore, your wife may feel otherwise. She went into the soul of the House, and she was enamoured of what she found. I have no power over that kind of stupidity.'

'But if I could somehow get her back?' Ted said.

'Then if your new champion here will stay in your place, I would not prevent your leaving. How's that? Will? Is that a fair bargain?'

'No,' Will said, 'but I'll accept it.'

Ted was beaming. 'Thank you,' he said to Will. 'Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.' Then to Rukenau, 'Does that mean I can go?'

'By all means. Find her. If she'll come to you, that is, which I frankly doubt...'

This talk didn't wipe the smile from Ted's face. He was gone in a moment, darting off across the chamber. Before he'd even reached the door he'd started calling his wife's name.

'She won't come to him,' Rukenau said, when Ted had exited the chamber. 'The Domus Mundi has her. What does he have to offer her by way of seduction?'

'His love?' Will said.

'The world doesn't care for love, Will. It goes on its way, indifferent to our feelings. You know that.'

'But perhaps...'

'Perhaps what? Go on, tell me what's on your mind.'

'Perhaps we haven't shown it enough love ourselves.'

'Oh would that make the world kind?' Rukenau said. 'Would that make the sea bear me up if I was drowning? Would a plague rat elect not to bite me, because I professed my love? Will, don't be so childish. The world doesn't care what Theodore feels for his wife; and his wife is too entranced with the glamour of this miserable place to look twice at him. That is the bitter truth.'

'I don't see what's so enchanting about this place.'

'Of course you don't. That's because I've worked against its seductions over the years. I've had them sealed from my sight with mud and excrement. Much of it my own, by the way. A man passes a lot of shite in two hundred and seventy years.'

'So it was you that covered the walls?'

'At the beginning it was my personal handiwork, yes. Later, when people made the mistake of wandering in, I turned their hands to the task. Many of them died doing it, I'm afraid-' He interrupted himself, rising to his feet on his perch. 'Oh now,' he said. 'It begins.'

'What's happening?'

'Jacob Steep has just entered.' There was a barely perceptible tremor in Rukenau's voice.

'Then you'd better tell me what you know about him,' Will replied. 'And do it quickly.'

CHAPTER XIII

Now that he was in the House, Steep saw the perfection of the route that had brought him here. Perhaps, after all, he had not returned into the Domus Mundi to perish; at least not yet. Perhaps he had come into this place to do his ambition greater service. Rosa had been right when she accused him of loving the slaughter; he always had, always would. It was one of his appetites as a man; to love the hunt, the blood-letting and the kill came as naturally as voiding his bladder. And now, back in this House, he would have the opportunity to feed that appetite as never before. Once Will and Rosa were dead, and Rukenau too, he would sit at the heart of the Domus Mundi, and oh what he would do. He would show the merchants who raped the world from their boardrooms, and the popes who sanctioned harvests of hungry children, and the potentates who salved their loneliness with shows of destruction, sights that would astonish them. He would be chillier than an accountant's ledger; crueller than a general on the night of a coup d'etat.

Why hadn't he seen the ease of this before? Stupidity, was it? Or cowardice, more like, afraid to return into the presence of the man who'd wielded such power over him. Well, he wasn't afraid any longer. He would not waste any more time with knives hereafter (except for Rukenau, perhaps; Rukenau he would stab). In his dealings with the rest of the world, he would be far cleverer. He would poison the tree while it was still a seed, and let all who ate from it perish. He would warp the foetus in the womb and blight the harvest before it even showed itself. Nothing would survive this holocaust; nothing: it would, in time, be the end of everything, except for God and himself.

All his life had been, he realized, a preparation for this return; and the conspiracies mounted against him by the woman and the queer, even that kiss, that vile kiss, had been ways to bring him, all unknowing, to this threshold.

He was astonished when he stepped inside, to see how changed the place was. He went down on his haunches and scraped at the ground: it was covered with a layer of excrement; animal and human mingled. The walls the same; and the ceiling. The whole House, which had been so transcendent at its creation, so light, had been concealed behind layers of dirt. Rukenau's doing, no doubt. Steep wasn't surprised. For all his metaphysical pretensions, Rukenau had at heart been a foolish and frightened man. Hadn't he dispatched Jacob to bring Thomas home to the island, because he'd needed an artist's vision to understand what he'd wrought? In lieu of that comprehension, what had he done? Covered the glories of the Domus Mundi with clay and shit.

Poor Rukenau, Jacob thought; poor, human Rukenau. And then the thought became a shout, which echoed off the walls as he strode in search of his sometime master. 'Poor Rukenau! Oh, poor, poor Rukenau!'

'He's calling my name

'Ignore him,' Will said. 'I need to know what he is.'

'You already know,' Rukenau replied. 'You used the very word yourself. He's a Nilotic.'

'That's a location, not a description. I need to know details.'

'I know the legends. I know the prayers. But I don't know anything that could pass for the truth.'

'Just spit it out, whatever it is!'

Rukenau looked at him balefully, and for a moment it seemed he would say nothing; then the words came, and once begun there was no stopping them. No time for questions, or clarifications. Just an unburdening.

'I am the bastard son of a man who built churches,' he said. 'Great places of worship my father made, in his time. And when I was old enough, though I'd not been brought up in the bosom of his family, I sought him out and said: I think I have just a little of your genius in me. Let me walk in your footsteps; I'll be your apprentice. Of course, he'd have none of it. I was a bastard. I couldn't be there, in public view, embarrassing him in the eyes of his patrons. He drove me away. And when I went from his house I said: so be it. I'll find my own way in the world, and I'll make a place where God wants so much to come that He'll leave all my father's fine churches empty.