Cale, his left hand wrapped in a dirty piece of linen previously thrown away by the washerserfs, walked through the huge refectory for the second sitting carrying a wooden tray. Late to arrive, though not too late—for this he would have been beaten and excluded—he walked toward the large table at the end of the room where he always ate. He stopped behind another boy, about the same age and height but so intent on eating that he did not notice Cale standing behind him. It was the others at the table whose raised heads alerted him. He looked up.
“Sorry, Cale,” he said, shoving the remains of his food into his mouth at the same time as he stepped out from behind the bench and hurried off carrying his tray.
Cale sat down and looked at his supper: there was something that looked like a sausage, but was not, covered in a watery gravy with some indeterminate root vegetable bleached by endless boiling into a yellowy pale mush. In a bowl beside it was porridge, gelatinous and cold and gray as week-old slush. For a moment, starving as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to start eating. Then someone pushed his way onto the bench beside him. Cale didn’t look at him but started to eat. Only the slight twitch at the edge of his mouth revealed what filthy stuff it was.
The boy who had pushed in next to him started to speak, but so low was his voice that only Cale could hear. It was unwise to be caught speaking to another boy at mealtimes.
“I found something,” said the boy, the excitement clear even though he was barely audible.
“Good for you,” replied Cale without emotion.
“Something wonderful.”
This time Cale did not react at all, instead concentrating on getting the porridge down without gagging. There was a pause from the boy.
“There’s food. Food you can eat.” Cale barely raised his head, but the boy next to him knew that he had won.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Vague Henri was with me. Meet us at seven behind the Hanged Redeemer.”
With that the boy stood up and was gone. Cale raised his head, and a strange look of longing came over his face, so different from the cold mask he usually showed the world that the boy opposite stared at him.
“Don’t you want that?” said the boy, eyes bright with hope as if the rancid sausage and waxy gray porridge offered more joy than he could easily comprehend.
Cale did not reply or look at the boy but began eating again, forcing himself to swallow and trying not to be sick.
When he had finished, Cale took his wooden tray to the cleanorium, scrubbed it in the bowl with sand and put it back in its rack. On his way out, watched by a Redeemer sitting in a huge high chair from which he could survey the refectory, Cale knelt in front of the statue of the Hanged Redeemer, beat his breast three times and muttered, “I am Sin, I am Sin, I am Sin,” without the slightest regard for what the words meant.
Outside it was dark and the evening fog had descended. This was good; it would make it easier for Cale to slip unnoticed from the ambo into the bushes that grew behind the great statue.
By the time he arrived Cale was unable to see more than fifteen feet in front of him. He stepped down from the ambo and onto the gravel in front of the statue.
This was the largest of all the holy gibbets in the Sanctuary, and there must have been hundreds of them, some of them no larger than a few inches, nailed to walls, set in niches, decorating the tubs of holy ashes at the end of every corridor and on the spaces above every door. They were so common, so frequently referred to, that the image itself had long ago lost any meaning. Nobody, except the freshboys, really noticed them for what they were: models of a man hanging from a gallows with a rope around his neck, his body hatched with scars from the torture before his execution, his broken legs dangling at strange angles beneath him. Holy gibbets of the Hanged Redeemer made during the Sanctuary’s founding a thousand years before were crude and tended to a straightforward realism: a terror in the eyes and face for all the lack of carving skill, the body twisted and wracked, the tongue protruding from the mouth. This, said the carvers, was a horrible way to die. Over the years the statues had become more skilled but also milk-and-water. The great statue, with its huge gallows, its thick rope and twenty-foot-tall savior dangling from it, was only thirty years old: the weals on his back were pronounced but neat and bloodless. Rather than being agonizingly smashed, his legs were held in a pose as if he were suffering more from cramp. But it was the expression on his face that was oddest of all—instead of the pain of strangulation he had a look of inconvenienced holiness, as if a small bone was stuck in his throat and he was clearing it with a demure cough.
Nevertheless, on this night in the fog and the dark the only things that Cale could see of the Redeemer were his huge feet dangling out of the white mist. The oddness of this made him uneasy. Careful not to make any noise, Cale eased himself into the bushes that obscured him from anyone walking past.
“Cale?”
“Yes.”
The boy from the refectory, Kleist, and Vague Henri emerged from the bushes in front of Cale.
“This better be worth the risk, Henri,” whispered Cale.
“It is, Cale. I promise.”
Kleist gestured Cale to follow into the bushes against the wall. It was even darker here and Cale had to wait for his eyes to adjust. The two others waited. There was a door.
This was astonishing—while there were plenty of doorways in the Sanctuary, there were few doors. During the Great Reformation two hundred years before, more than half the Redeemers had been burned at the stake for heresy. Fearing that these apostates might have contaminated their boys, the victorious sect of Redeemers had cut their throats just to be on the safe side. After the restocking of freshboys, the Redeemers had made many changes and one of them had been to remove all the doors wherever there were boys.
What, after all, could be the purpose of a door where there were sinners? Doors hid things. Doors were about many devil-type things, they decided, about secrecy, about being alone or with others and up to something. The very concept of a door, now that they thought of it, began to make the Redeemers shake with rage and fear. The devil himself was no longer just depicted as a horned beast but almost as often as a rectangle with a lock. Of course this antipathy toward doors did not apply to the Redeemers themselves: the very sign of their own redemption was the possession of a door to their place of work and their sleeping cells. Holiness for the Redeemers was measured by the numbers of keys they were allowed to hold on the chain around their waists. To jangle as you walked was to show that you were already being tolled to heaven.
This was why the discovery of an unknown door was something amazing.
Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, Cale could see a pile of broken plaster and crumbling bricks piled next to the door.
“I was hiding from Chetnick,” said Vague Henri. “That’s how I found this place. The plaster on the corner there was falling away, so while I waited I picked at it. It was all crumbling—water had got in. It only took half a mo.”
Cale reached out toward the edge of the door and pushed carefully. Then again, and again.
“It’s locked.”
Kleist and Vague Henri smiled. Kleist reached into his pocket and took out something Cale had never seen in a boy’s possession—a key. It was long and thick and pitted with rust. All their eyes were shining with excitement now. Kleist put the key in the lock and turned, grunting with the effort. Then, with a clunk! it shifted.
“It took us three days of shoveling in grease and stuff to get it to open,” said Vague Henri, his voice thick with pride.
“Where did you get the key?” asked Cale. Kleist and Vague Henri were delighted that Cale was talking to them as if they had raised the dead or walked on water.
“I’ll tell you when we get in. Come on.” Kleist put his shoulder to the door, and the others did the same. “Don’t push too hard, the hinges might be in bad shape. We don’t want to make any noise. I’ll count to three.” He paused. “Rea
dy? One, two, three.”
They pushed. Nothing. It wouldn’t budge. They stopped, took a deep breath. “One, two, three.”
They heaved, and then with a screech the door shifted. They stepped back, alarmed. To be heard was to be caught, to be caught was to be subject to God knows what.
“We could be hanged for this,” said Cale. The others looked at him.
“They wouldn’t. Not a hanging.”
“The Militant told me that the Lord of Discipline was looking for an excuse to set an example. It’s been five years since the last hanging.”
“They wouldn’t,” repeated Vague Henri, shocked.
“Yes, they would. This is a door, for God’s sake. You have a key.” Cale turned to Kleist. “You lied to me. You’ve got no idea what’s in there. It’s probably a dead end, nothing worth stealing, nothing worth knowing.” He looked back at the other boy. “It isn’t worth the risk, Henri, but it’s your neck. I’m out.”
As he started to turn, a voice called from the ambo, angry and impatient.
“Who’s there? What was that noise?”
Then they heard the sound of a man stepping onto the gravel in front of the Hanged Redeemer.
2
Sheer terror would be mild compared to what Kleist and Henri felt as they heard that sound, the knowledge of the cruelty coming to them for their stupidity—the vast and silent crowd waiting in the gray light, their screams as they were dragged to the gallows, the terrible hour-long wait as Mass was sung and then the rope and being hauled into the air, choking and kicking.
But Cale had already moved over to the door and with one silent surge of effort lifted the door up from its collapsing hinges and pushed. It swung open almost silently. He reached for the shoulders of the two motionless boys and pushed them into the gap. Once they were in, he squeezed himself in after them and with another huge effort shut the door behind him, again almost silently.
“Come out! At once!” The sound of the man’s voice was muffled, but still clear.
“Give me the key,” said Cale. Kleist handed it over. Cale turned to the door and felt for the lock. Then he paused. He did not know how to use a key. “Kleist! You!” he whispered. Kleist felt for the lock and then slipped in the heavy key.
“Quietly,” said Cale.
With a trembling hand that knew that what it was doing was death or life, Kleist twisted the key.
It turned with what seemed to them the clang of a hammer on an iron pot.
“Come here now!” demanded the muffled voice. But Cale could hear that there was uncertainty in it. Whoever was out there in the fog was unsure of what he had heard.
They waited. In the silence only the light rasp of the breathing of the fearful. Then they could just make out the muffled crunch of gravel as the man turned away, the sound quickly swallowed up.
“He’s gone for the Gougers.”
“Perhaps not,” said Cale. “I think it was the Lord Vittles. He’s an idle fat bastard and he wasn’t sure what he heard. He could have searched the bushes but he wouldn’t make the effort. He’ll be wary of getting the Gougers out with the dogs when he wasn’t even ready to check behind a few bushes because of the strain on his lardy carcass.”
“If he comes back tomorrow when it’s light, he’ll find the door,” said Vague Henri. “Even if we escape now, they’ll come after us.”
“They’ll come after someone and they’ll make sure they find them, whether they’re guilty or not. There’s nothing to connect us with this place. Someone will take it in the neck but there’s no reason it should be us.”
“What if he has gone for help?” said Kleist.
“Unlock the door and let’s get out.”
Kleist felt for the door and patted his way down to the key sticking out of the lock. He tried to turn it but it wouldn’t budge. Then he tried again. Nothing. Then he twisted as hard as he could. There was a loud snap!
“What was that?” demanded Vague Henri.
“The key,” said Kleist. “It’s broken off in the lock.”
“What?” said Cale.
“It’s broken. We can’t get out. Not this way.”
“God!” swore Cale. “You half-wit. If I could see you, I’d wring your neck.”
“There might be another way out.”
“And how are we going to find it in the pitch black?” said Cale bitterly.
“I have a light,” said Kleist. “I thought we’d need one.”
There was a pause, with only the ruffling of Kleist searching his cassock, dropping something, finding it again and then some more ruffling. Then there were sparks as he struck a flint onto some dry moss. Quickly it began to flame, and in its light they could see Kleist touching it to the wick of a carrying candle. In a moment he had inserted it into its glass cap and they could look around for the first time.
It’s true that there was not much to be seen in the light of the carrying candle, only a poor illumination is to be had from the yellow rendered fat of animal meat, but it was clear to the boys as soon as they looked around that this was not a room but a blocked-off corridor.
Cale took the light from Kleist and examined the door.
“This plaster isn’t that old—a few years at most.”
In the corner something scuttled and the three of them had the same thought: rats.
The eating of rats was forbidden to the boys on religious grounds, but this was at least one taboo with a good reason behind it—they were disease on four legs. Nevertheless, the meat of a rat was considered a great treat by the boys. Of course, not everyone could be a rat butcher. The skill was much prized and was passed from butcher to trainee in exchange only for expensive swag and mutual favors. The rat butchers were a secretive lot and charged half the rat for their services—a price so high that from time to time some catchers had decided to dispense with them and try butchering for themselves, often with results that encouraged the others to pay up and be grateful. Kleist was a trained butcher.
“We don’t have time,” said Cale, realizing what was on his mind. “And the light isn’t good enough to prepare one.”
“I can skin a rat in the pitch black,” replied Kleist. “Who knows how long we’ll be stuck?” He pulled up his cassock and removed a large pebble from a pocket hidden in the hem. He took careful aim and then lashed it into the semidark. In the corner there was a squeal and a horrible scuttling. Kleist took the candle from Cale and walked toward the sound. He reached into his pocket and with great care unfolded a small piece of cloth and used it to get hold of the creature. With a flick of his wrist he snapped its neck and then put it in the same pocket.
“I’ll finish later.”
“This is a corridor,” said Cale. “It must’ve led somewhere once, maybe it still does.” As the one with the candle, Kleist took the lead.
After less than a minute Cale began to revise his opinions. No doorways, bricked up or otherwise, appeared as Cale had hoped.
“This isn’t a corridor,” said Cale at last, still keeping his voice low. “It’s more like a tunnel.”
For more than half an hour they walked on and moved quickly, despite the dark, because the floor was almost completely smooth and clear of rubbish.
Eventually it was Cale who spoke.
“Why did you tell me there was food when you’d never even been here?”
“Obvious,” said Vague Henri. “You wouldn’t have come otherwise, would you?”
“And how stupid that would have been. You promised me food, Kleist, and I was idiot enough to trust you.”
“I thought you were famous, you know, for not trusting people,” said Kleist. “Besides, we have a rat. I didn’t lie. Anyway, there is food.”
“How do you know?” said Henri, his voice betraying his hunger.
“There are lots more rats. Rats need to eat. They have to get it from somewhere.”
Kleist stopped suddenly.
“What’s the matter?” asked Henri.
Kleist held out the
candle. In front of them was a wall. There was no door.
“Maybe it’s behind the plaster,” said Kleist.
Cale felt the wall with the palm of his hand and then tapped it with his knuckle. “It’s not plaster, it’s rice flour and concrete. Same as the outer walls.” There would be no breaking through this.
“We’ll have to go back. Maybe we missed a door in the side of the tunnel. We weren’t looking for that.”
“I don’t think so,” said Cale. “And besides . . . how long will the candle burn for?”
Kleist looked at the tallow he was holding. “Twenty minutes.”
“What’ll we do?” said Vague Henri.
“Put the candle out and let’s have a think,” said Cale.
“Good idea,” said Kleist.
“Happy you think so,” muttered Cale, and he sat down on the floor.
Having sat down himself, Kleist opened the glass and extinguished the flame between thumb and forefinger.
They sat in the dark, all three of them distracted by the smell of the animal fat from the candle. For them the stench of burned rancid tallow was a reminder of one thing: food.
After five minutes, Vague Henri spoke.
“I was just . . .” His sentence trailed off. The other two waited.