Broken Voices

11

Later, much later, I was wrenched from a deep sleep. Faraday was standing over me. He hadn’t lit the gas but a candle was burning on the mantelpiece, sending the shadows flickering across the room.

‘Go away,’ I said and shut my eyes again.

‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘It’s time.’

He pulled back the covers and cold air washed over me. I sat up abruptly and pushed him away.

‘You’re crazy,’ I said. ‘Mad as a coot.’ I tried to pull the covers back over me.

‘You’re yellow,’ he said. ‘Yellow.’

I swore at him and swung my legs out of bed. The bed creaked.

‘Don’t make a noise,’ he said.

‘Shut up, you ape. Bloody Rabbit. Go to hell.’

I pulled on the rest of my clothes, fumbling interminably with the buttons. Faraday opened the door. Carrying our shoes, we tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. At every step we paused to listen for sounds from Mr Ratcliffe’s bedroom.

We reached the hall without mishap and put on our shoes, hats and coats. We took it in turns to shield the candle flame, for light can betray you as much as noise.

By now I was fully awake. It would be too much to say that I was entering into the spirit of the thing but taking second place to Faraday was beginning to irk me. I pushed him aside when he was about to lift the key from its hook. I was the one who unlocked the door and lifted the heavy latch. It made much less noise than I had expected. We slipped outside and closed the door behind us.

There were still clouds, though fewer and wispier than before and moving rapidly across the sky. The stars shone down between them.

We crossed the yard in front of the Sacrist’s Lodging and let ourselves out through the gate in the wall. The lawn that bordered the east end of the Cathedral was covered in frost. Two of the lamps that burned all night stood at this end of the College — one nearby, at the gate leading to the north door, the other on the far side of the lawn. Yellow coronas of moisture hung around their lamps.

‘We had better walk across the grass,’ Faraday whispered in my ear. ‘Quieter.’

We tiptoed across the gravel path and set off across the lawn in the direction of the further light.

‘Where the devil are we going?’ I said. ‘How are we going to get inside?’

He ignored me. He ploughed on, head down against the cold wind. I plodded after him.

‘God, it’s freezing,’ I whispered.

‘I feel boiling. Come on.’

Faraday led us right round the east end of the church and down to the flagged path leading to the south door. I glanced back. Our ragged footprints marched across the frosty grass. We were now in the larger, grander part of the College, where the houses of the Dean and Chapter were.

I looked about us. All the windows I could see were in darkness. But there were more lamps here, stretching down the road leading to the Porta and the Veals’ house.

Faraday made for the south door.

I hurried after him. ‘What are you doing? It’ll be locked.’

He took no notice but led the way into the south porch. This had been formed by an accident of history from the one surviving fragment of the east walk of the mediaeval cloister.

It was darker here but Faraday did not slacken his place. I blundered after him. He stopped abruptly just before the door into the Cathedral and I bumped into him.

He didn’t try to open the door. Instead he moved to the left. There was another door here, much smaller, set in a square-headed archway. He reached up, as high as he could, and ran his fingertips along the top of the lintel, palpating the stone. I heard a faint chink. A key turned in the lock. The door scraped open and a current of cool air smelling of candles swept out to meet us.

Faraday took my arm and drew me after him through the doorway. It was much darker here, an enclosed space. Faraday closed the door behind us.

‘Where are we?’ I whispered.

‘The choir vestry.’

‘But the door for that’s in the nave.’

He laughed, showing his knowledge. ‘This is the other door. Dr Atkinson uses it when he needs to come in at night, or early in the morning, when the Cathedral’s locked. He sent me to fetch something once. He said it could be useful for the head of choir to know where to find the key.’

‘You’re not head of the choir now,’ I said, too scared to be kind. ‘You’re not even in the choir.’

Faraday lit a match. We were in a long room with the central aisle across which benches faced each other. There was a grand piano at the far end, with a dozen or so music stands huddled together like a herd of skeletal creatures. This was where the choir practised.

Before the flame had died, Faraday had reached a cupboard and opened its door. He asked me to light and hold up another match.

‘We mustn’t risk the gas,’ he said. ‘But there are some candles here.’

Most of the shelves held books of music. But the top shelf was filled with a jumble of objects, through which Faraday rummaged while I lit match after match. He unearthed three candle stumps, a candle lantern and another box of matches. He lit one of them, put it in the lantern and closed the glass. A faint radiance spread through the vestry. It made me feel better. It made what we were doing seem a little less strange.

Holding up the lantern, Faraday opened a desk that stood at the far end of the room. In a moment he gave a little cry of triumph and held up a long key.

‘What’s that for?’

‘The door from the choir vestry to the Cathedral.’

‘All these keys without labels,’ I said. ‘Old Veal would have a fit if he knew.’

We snorted with suppressed laughter, the tension forcing its way out as a bubble of mirth.

‘Atky doesn’t let him in here,’ Faraday said. ‘They hate each other.’

He unlocked the door into the Cathedral. This was nine feet tall beneath a pointed archway; I had often seen the choir marching through it, two by two, processing into the Cathedral in their cassocks and surplices.

We passed into the south aisle. Faraday pulled the door to behind us but did not latch it.

For a moment we stood still, shocked by the immense, cold darkness around us. We were in the belly of a huge and unimaginably heavy stone beast. I had been scared before — but what I felt now was something different — terror, yes, but there was an element of awe mixed in with it. At night the Cathedral lost its familiarity and became strange.

‘Oh God.’ Faraday sounded close to tears. ‘It’s horrible.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s just dark, that’s all. You’re not scared, are you?’

It was bravado that made me say that, together with the desire to contradict and needle Faraday. The more signs of fear he showed, the more my bravado increased.

‘Come on, Rabbit. We haven’t got all night.’

We set off down to the south aisle, which would take us the length of the nave to the west tower. At first we walked slowly and then more quickly. I tried to suppress the idea that there might be someone behind us.

I glanced upward. I could not even see the vault of the aisle. On our right were the massive pillars of the nave, looming palely like a line of great grey oak trees. The lantern cast a puddle of light on the grounds, enough to see where we were going, but little else.

Faraday touched my arm. ‘We had better stay together.’ I felt his hand sliding around my elbow and gripping it. ‘If — if we hold onto each other, we can’t get lost.’

He spoke in a whisper. All the time we were in the Cathedral that night, we spoke in whispers — except, of course, at the end. I felt there was a danger that we might be overheard: that someone or something was listening.