He looks at each of the faces sitting beneath his gaze. He ends on mine, holds there.
“No priests.”
He walks over, lifts a foot, and puts it on my chest. I sense Byron shift next to me, but I stay still and hope he will, as well. The slightest rebellion now and they’ll tear us apart like snared rabbits.
“Do you see my mercy, Peter? Do you still think me . . . what? A demon? Possessed? Do you still believe you can cast me away with your cross and bad Latin?”
He gives a little push with his foot and I rock back, catching myself from falling with a hand to the floor behind me.
“Now,” he continues, pacing once more, “who will take me up on this offer of mercy?”
I hear shuffling behind me, the sound of someone standing. I close my eyes, feel the sour pit of my stomach roil. A bitter taste fills my throat. Despair threatens to overwhelm me even before I hear the words.
“I will,” someone says. “I want to live.”
A boy steps past me. Byron curses under his breath. I open my eyes and see Bartholomew embracing young Harry, only eight years old and terrified. Part of me is relieved. One less to die. One less I’m responsible for saving.
I wish him well.
“Good,” Bartholomew says. “Who else?”
No one moves, and I see a sharp flare of anger, of disappointment, cross Bartholomew’s face. A flash of dark eyes, the grim set of his mouth.
“I think,” he says slowly, “that you lot have put a heavy load of confidence in Saint Peter, here. Excuse me, I apologize. Father Peter. Even so, and I hate to say it, brothers, but I think Peter is steering you all wrong.”
He turns his back to us, folds his hands behind him. “Brother Johnson,” he says, and the giant—who since the end of the onslaught has been leaning against a wall, head down, as if bored with it all—looks up.
Bartholomew turns back, and when I see his face I know once more that I am right. That is no child’s face, no young boy’s expression. It is not the visage of Bartholomew I see in the dim, winking orange light, but a wrinkled mass of black flesh with deep-set red eyes, a mouth filled with too many teeth.
“Come over here, Johnson. Come over here and kill Peter.”
Johnson pushes off the wall, begins walking toward us in shambling steps.
Bartholomew addresses the others in the room, his voice filled with mockery and hate. “Some of you may want to look away for this bit,” he says, then turns back to me.
His smile has returned, along with his child’s mask.
“It won’t be pleasant.”
53
THE ROOT CELLAR BELOW THE KITCHEN IS ABOUT THE worst place David can think of being sent. It’s dark, damp, cobweb-strewn, scary, pungent, and disgusting.
And the second trip is no better than the first.
He wants to leave Poole, run back up the stairs to the dormitory, jump into the fight to save his friends from whoever, or whatever （if you believe Peter） those others are. Children or demons, he thinks, it is the same difference to him. Either way, they want him dead. Along with Peter, Andrew, and the others.
He has to get back.
But Poole has convinced him that the best way to save them is to do what he says, to help him exact revenge on all of them.
“An eye for an eye,” he said, and cackled like a fairy tale witch. David had almost broke and ran then. Almost. But a decade of discipline and punishment, of following orders, has been ingrained deeply into him. Poole scorched his will onto David’s mind, cut it into his soul. He does not think Poole can punish him for disobedience, not anymore, but it hardly matters.
He can’t disobey even if he wants to.
So he’s gone to the root cellar, and gotten the things Poole had asked for:
Four barrels of kerosene oil. A lantern. A hatchet.
“They’re heavy, but you’re strong,” he said, his face so close that David had to force himself not to stare into those red pits that were once the priest’s eyes. “And don’t forget the hatchet! It’s on the woodpile in the boiler room. While you’re there, feed the furnace. No point in everyone freezing to death. Now go.”
He brought two barrels the first trip, huffing as he made it back to the foyer, his arms burning with the strain. On the second, he returned with the second pair. He plucked the lantern from the dining hall, and the wood hatchet was stuck into his belt. The hatchet being the one thing he grabbed that made sense.
At least he can defend himself now.
I pray you’re okay, Peter. Curse me for listening to this old fool!
Poole has somehow managed to stumble to the chapel doors on his own. He’s waiting there when David returns the second time. “Put three of them in the center of the foyer, so you can see them easily from the balcony. Put them close to the doors.”
“Well, which is it?” David snaps, using a tone he would never have imagined using in a million years toward the head priest, the very one who scarred his hands and back when he was younger, punishment for indiscretions he can’t even remember.
And by God it feels good.
“You want them in the center or by the doors?” he says, more softly now.
Poole hesitates a moment, as if debating whether to chide the boy’s tone, then simply waves a hand impatiently. “Just do it.”
David sighs and splits the difference, putting all three barrels in a clump. “Okay, Father. They’re down.”
“Good. Do you have the hatchet?”
David pulls it from his belt and grips it, feeling its heft and balance. He thinks he hears muffled screams, and impatience runs through him like wildfire. “Yes. Father, we need to hurry . . .”
“Don’t sass me, boy,” he spits, his voice like a whip. “I let it go once.”
David swallows. Got to hand it to him, he’s still a mean old bastard even without the eyes. “Yes, Father,” he says, and waits.
Poole nods. “Break the spigot off one of the barrels. If it won’t break with the butt of that hatchet, then chop into the wood.”
David looks down at the barrels, the dark red wood, the dark iron spigots near the base. “But . . .” he starts, but Poole cuts him off.
“Do it! As you say, we must hurry!”
David nods dumbly, spins the hatchet in his hand so the blunt end faces downward, and chops hard at the spigot.
It pops off clean, and kerosene oil burbles from the new hole, begins puddling onto the floor. Satisfied, he walks over to Poole. “It’s done.”
Poole reaches out, finds David, and pats his arm. “Excellent.” Poole grabs one of David’s hands and slaps a tin case into it. “Use my matches to strike your lantern. You’ll need to bring the lantern and the last barrel, along with the hatchet. Can you manage?”
“Yes, Father,” David says, disgusted at the pride he feels carrying out the man’s wishes.
Poole pats David’s cheek, smiling. His skin is rough as sandpaper, and David tries not to recoil at his touch. “Good boy. I’ll tell you the rest as we go. Now, grab your things, and let me take your elbow so you can lead me.”
“Okay, but where are we going?”
“Where you’ve wanted to go this entire time, my son,” he says, clenching David’s arm in a fierce, painful grip.