'What did Rukenau do to you two?' Will said softly.
The flesh inside Steep's flesh stared out at him like a prisoner, despairing of release. 'Tell me,' Will pressed. Still it said nothing. Yet it wanted to speak; Will could see the desire to do so in its eyes; how it wanted to tell its story. He leaned a little closer to it. 'Try,' he said.
It inclined its head towards him, until their mouths were only three or four inches apart. No sound escaped it; nor could, Will suspected. The prisoner had been mute too long to find its voice again so quickly. But while they were so close, gaze meeting gaze, he could not waste its proximity. He leaned another inch towards it, and the Nilotic, knowing what was coming, smiled. Then Will kissed it, lightly, reverently, on the lips. The creature returned his kiss, pressing its cool mouth against his.
The next moment, as had happened with Rosa, the thread of light burned itself out in him, and was gone. The veil fell instantly, obscuring what lay beneath, and the face Will was kissing was Steep's face. Jacob pushed him away with a shout of disgust, as though he'd momentarily shared Will's trance and only now realized what the power inside him had sanctioned. Then he fell back against the wall, clenching his wounded hand tight closed to be certain no more of this traitorous fluid escaped, and with the back of his other hand, wiped his lips clean. He scoured every trace of gentility from his face as he did so. All perplexity, all doubt, were gone. Fixing Will with a rabid gaze, he reached down and picked up the knife that lay between them. There was no room for further exchange, Will knew. Steep wasn't going to be talking about God or forgiveness any longer. All he wanted to do was kill the man who'd just kissed him.
Even though he knew there was no hope of peace now, Will took his time as he retreated to the door, studying Steep. When next they met, it would be death for one of them; this would most likely be his last opportunity to look at the man whose brotherhood he had so passionately wanted to share. A kiss such as they'd exchanged was nothing to a man who was certain of himself. But Steep was not certain; never had been. Like so many of the men Will had watched and wanted in his life, he lived in fear of his manhood being seen for what it was, a murderous figment; a trick of spit and swagger that concealed a far stranger spirit.
He could watch no longer; another five seconds and the knife would be at his throat. He turned, and took himself off across the threshold, down the path and out into the street. Steep didn't follow. He would brood a while, Will guessed, putting his thoughts in murderous order before he began his final pursuit. And pursue he would. Will had kissed the spirit in him, and that was a crime the figment would never forgive. It would come, knife in hand. Nothing was more certain.
PART SIX
He Enters The House Of The World
CHAPTER I
Will emerged from the Donnelly house in a daze and remained that way for the next hour or so. He was aware of getting into Frannie's car, Rosa half-lying across the seat behind him, and their taking off out of the village as though they had a horde of fallen angels on their heels; but he was monosyllabic in his responses to Frannie's enquiries, resenting her attempts to snap him out of his fugue. Was he hurt? she wanted to know. He told her no. And Steep; what about Steep? Alive, he told her. Hurt? she asked. Yes, he told her. Badly enough to kill him? she asked. He told her no. Pity, she said.
A little while later, they stopped at a garage and Frannie got out to use the phone. He didn't care why. But she told him anyway when she got back into the driver's seat. She'd called the police, to tell them where to find Sherwood's body. She was stupid not to have done it earlier, she said. Maybe they would have caught Steep. 'Never,' he said.
They drove on again in silence. Rain began to spatter the windscreen; fat drops slapping hard against the glass. He wound the window halfway down, and the rain came in against his face, and the smell of the rain too: tangy, metallic. Slowly, the chill began to rouse him from his trance. The numbness in his knife-hand started to recede, and his fingers and palm began instead to ache. As the minutes passed he began to pay some attention to the journey he was on, though there was nothing of any great significance to be noted. The roads they were travelling were neither jammed nor deserted, the weather neither foul nor fine; sometimes the clouds would unleash a little rain, sometimes they would show a sliver of blue. It was all reassuringly mundane, and he took refuge from his memories of Steep's vision by making himself its witness. There to his left was a car carrying two nuns and a child; there was a woman putting on lipstick as she drove; there was a bridge being demolished, and a train running parallel to the motorway for a little distance, with men and women rocking in its windows, staring out, glassy-eyed. There was a sign, pointing north to Glasgow: one hundred and eighty miles. And then without warning, Frannie said, 'I'm sorry. We have to stop,' and bringing the vehicle over to the side of the motorway, got out. It was all Will could do to stir himself from his seat, but at length he did so. The rain was coming on again; his scalp ached where the drops struck. 'Are ... you ... sick?' he asked her. It was the first time he'd put a sentence together since they'd left the village, and it took effort.
'No,' Frannie said, wiping rain from her eyes.
'Then what's wrong?'
'I have to go back,' she said. 'I can't...' she shook her head, plainly enraged at herself. 'I shouldn't have left him. What was I thinking? He's my own brother.'
'He's dead,' Will said. 'You can't help him.'
She covered her mouth with her hand, still shaking her head. There were tears mingling with the rain, running down her face.
'If you want to go back,' Will said, 'we'll go back.'
Frannie's hand slid from her face. 'I don't know what I want,' she said. 'Then what would Sherwood have wanted?'
Frannie gazed forlornly at the bundled figure in the back of the car. 'He would have done his damnedest to make Rosa happy. Lord knows why, but that's what he would have done.' She looked at Will now, her expression close to utter despair, 'You know, I've spent most of my adult life doing things to accommodate him?' she said. 'I suppose I may as well do this one last thing.' She sighed. 'But this is the last, damn it.'
Will took over the wheel for the next stage of the journey.
'Where are we headed?' he wanted to know.
'To Oban,' Frannie told him.
'What's in Oban?'
'It's where you catch the ferries for the islands.'
'How do you know?'
'Because I almost went, five or six years ago, with a group from the church. To see Iona. But I cancelled at the last minute.'
'Sherwood?'
'Of course. He didn't want to be left alone. So I didn't go,'
'We still don't know which island we're heading for,' Will said. 'I got an old atlas from the house. Do you want to run through the names with Rosa, to see if any of them ring a bell?' He glanced over his shoulder. 'Are you awake?'
'Always,' Rosa said. Her voice was weak.
'How are you feeling?'
'Tired,' she said.
'How's the bandage holding up?' Frannie asked her.