“Good, good. Let’s have the kids work a bit while you and I have a chat in the house, settle on numbers. I have some brandy that will put some color in those pale cheeks.”
Andrew turns to me before heading off. “Don’t load anything into the wagon just yet. Gather together what you can. We’ll want a count before we put everything in crates.”
“Yes, Father,” I say. I feel the weight of my leather satchel beneath the coat and against my hip, and I’m anxious to give Grace back her book, along with the letter tucked inside.
He gives me one last glance, one that is more worry than warning, but Grace is already taking my cold hand in her astonishingly warm one, pulling me toward the barn. “I’ll keep a close eye on him, Father Francis, don’t worry.”
Andrew scoffs once as I’m led away, as if pulled by a rope.
At the barn, Grace pulls open one of the large doors, which glides easily outward, shoveling snow away before it. She slips into the musty darkness, and I follow.
The barn interior is dim, lit only by the light coming through the bright seams of the walls and ceiling. It’s cold inside, but there’s no motion to the air so it’s less bitter. Grace pulls the door closed behind me, pulls a lantern off a peg and a tin of matches from a pocket.
“I think one light will be enough, don’t you?” she says, moving deeper into the barn.
I can smell the animals, hear the rustling cluck of the chickens, the whinny of horses. The cows, silent and stagnant, have been brought in for milking. Most of the other horses, goats, and cows remain in the pasture. A pigpen resides behind the structure, and I can hear their honking snorts. The entire barn is ripe with the smells of manure, hay, and beast.
“Where are the pups?” I ask, my nickname for the Hill’s two massive dogs.
“Sleeping inside the house,” she says. “They don’t like the cold, I guess.” We reach the main hen coop, which extends the length of the barn’s interior and is protected with heavy chicken wire to keep out predators. There are more than two hundred hens here and gathering the eggs will be no small task. By the end, my hand will be well-pecked, I know, but I love doing it nonetheless. We have only twenty chickens at St. Vincent’s, and none of them broilers; the meager egg supply barely enough for the many who need to eat, so the Hill eggs are always an essential item. Aside from the egg-layers, the farm boasts another fifty or so chickens that peck around in a separate pen, hand-picked to be sold for meat.
“Grace,” I say, bursting to speak with her before we get deep into the work. “I brought your book back. I read it three times through. It was wonderful, and even a bit frightening at times.”
She gives me a side-long glance that brings fresh heat to my cheeks. “Is that all?”
“No, of course not,” I say, both nervous and excited. “I wrote you something, as well.”
She stops walking and turns. Steps toward me. “A nice long letter, I hope.”
I swallow. She’s very close. The lantern light flickers warmly on her soft features. My thoughts jumble like tossed jacks. “I hear . . .” I turn my head, cough into my hand, which I notice is trembling. “I hear that the winter will be harsh.”
Grace tilts her head, her lips curling into a smile. Her green eyes glitter like jewels. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”
Before I can respond, Grace has hooked the lantern and slid her arms beneath my coat and around my waist. Her face looks up at mine steadily, studying. My whole world is green eyes and golden hair.
I’m too frozen to react, but she does fine for both of us, and gently pushes her warm, moist lips against mine. I close my eyes and kiss her, knowing full well that I’m lost in love.
And that my days of craving priesthood are behind me.
24
THEY MUST HAVE HEARD THE SCREAM.
It’s the first thought Johnson has when he enters the dining hall. All the boys stare anxiously at the doors when he comes through. There’s no chatter of thin voices, no clatter of flatware, only a sea of wide-eyed faces boring into him. An infested wave of curiosity.
Johnson takes long, brisk strides between the tables toward the dais, where Fathers White and Poole sit rapt, faces eager for information.
White’s expression is one of mild confusion and worry; Poole’s a boil of swelling anger.
Johnson tries to ignore the oddness of what his peripheral vision caught on a few faces as he walked through the boys. He could have sworn he saw a few of them smiling. Not friendly smiles, either. Cunning. Cats with sealed lips, their mouths filled with canaries.
Now face-to-face with Poole, close enough that he notices the crooked red veins in the man’s eyes, he whispers: “Father, we have a problem.”
*
Poole and Johnson stand in the middle of the chapel.
Johnson notices, with a repressed wave of revulsion, that the dripping has stopped.
All is complete silence, as if the two men stand inside a sealed tomb. Ben has been ordered back to the dormitory, instructed to stay there until further notice. Under no circumstance is he to interact with the other boys or tell anyone what he’s seen.
White, meanwhile, was appointed the duty of making sure none of the other children left the dining hall. When Johnson first asked for Poole to come with him, he asked why, of course. Asked what happened. Had demanded answers.
But Johnson refused to say anything other than: Please come.
The last thing he wanted was a reaction from Poole, or White, that would transform the boys’ stirring breeze of peaking curiosity into a whirlwind.
Now, they stand before the hung body, a flesh-and-blood mockery of Christ’s crucified form, the doors of the chapel sealed shut behind them. Nearly a minute has passed, and Poole has yet to say a word. Johnson is sweating, his nerves burning hot as red coals.
Finally, Poole breaks the dreadful, heavy silence.
“Take the boy down,” Poole says, his tone stoic. “He is desecrating a house of God.”
Johnson flinches at the priest’s tone, his demeanor at such a horrific sight as this . . . this poor child. He sulks forward, warily eyeing the large pool of brilliant red shimmering in the dim sunlight atop the bleached wood of the altar. Thin tendrils of red hang like string between the altar’s surface and the oak-planked hardwood of the floor. The boy’s life flowing away.
Flown away, now. Flown, flown away . . . he thinks, feeling jittery. Feeling unmoored.
He grips one of the deacon chairs, moves it close to the body. Standing upon it, he can easily reach the top of the hung cross, the loop of coarse, frayed rope. The rope’s other end is similarly looped, tight against the boy’s purple, swollen neck.
Is this the same chair they used when they hanged him? When they hooked his body on a peg like a fucking ornament? Did they stand upon the altar while they cut his arms, opening the veins?
Johnson figures, based on his limited experience with such things, that Basil must have been alive when they cut him. There is too much blood for it to be otherwise. His mind conjures up images of them holding the rope tight to his neck . . . somehow, someway, dragging him through the front doors and into the chapel, where they stripped him, hanged him, and butchered him.
Must have been at least . . . three boys that done it. A lookout, for sure. At least two to strangle him, catch him unaware, force the rope around his throat. A scout to run ahead, checking there was no one to see them when they towed the body through . . .