John Snyde knew nothing of these, nor would he have used them if he had. Small for my age, I was already getting too heavy to balance on glass, or to scramble through ivy onto the narrowest of ledges. I knew that in all his years as a St. Oswald’s Porter, he had never ventured as far as the fire escape on the Middle Corridor, let alone the precarious complex of gutters and pavements beyond. I was willing to gamble he would not do so now; or that if he did, he wouldn’t go far.
I looked across the roofscape in the direction of the Middle Corridor. There it was, the fire escape; a dinosaur skeleton strung out across the drop. It was in poor shape—bubbles of rust bursting through the thick paint—but it looked strong enough to take a man’s weight. Would he dare? I asked myself. And if he did, what would I do?
I considered climbing back toward the Library window, but it was too risky, too visible from the ground. Instead I used another run, teetering on a long joist between two large art-room skylights before climbing across the Observatory roof and up through the main gully back toward the Chapel. I knew a dozen possible means of escape. I had my keys, and I knew every cupboard, every passage and back stair. Leon and I need never be caught. In spite of myself I was excited; I could almost see our friendship renewed, the silly quarrel forgotten in the face of this greater adventure—
By now the fire escape was safely out of range; however, for a minute or two I knew I would be in full sight of the Quad. The risk was small, however. Silhouetted against the moonless sky, there was little chance of my being recognized by anyone from the courtyard below.
I ran for it then, my sneakers holding firm to the mossy slope. Below me, I could hear Bishop with his megaphone—Stay where you are! Help is on its way!—but I knew he hadn’t seen me. Now I reached the dinosaur’s spine, the ridge that dominated the main building, and stopped, straddling it. There was no sign of Leon. I guessed him to be hiding on the far side of the Bell Tower, where there was the most cover, and where, if he kept his head down, he would not be visible from the ground.
Quickly, on all fours, I monkeyed along the ridge. As I passed into the shade of the Bell Tower I looked back, but there was no sign of my father, either on the fire escape or on the walkway. Nor was there yet any sign of Leon. Now I reached the Bell Tower, jumped the familiar well between it and the Chapel roof, then from the comforting flag of shadow surveyed my rooftop empire. I risked a low call. “Leon!”
No reply. My pale voice ribboned out in the misty night.
“Leon!”
Then I saw him, flattened against the parapet twenty feet ahead of me, head craning like a gargoyle’s to the scene below.
“Leon.”
He’d heard me, I knew it; but he did not move. I began to climb toward him, keeping low. It could still work; I could show him the window; lead him to where he could hide; and then bring him out, unseen and unsuspected, when the coast was clear. I wanted to tell him that, but I wondered too whether he would listen.
I crept closer; below, the deafening yawn of the megaphone. Then, sudden lights harrowed the rooftop in red and blue; for a second I saw Leon’s shadow shoot over the roof, then he was down flat again, swearing. The fire engines had arrived.
“Leon.”
Still nothing. Leon seemed mortared to the parapet. The voice from the megaphone was a giant blur of vowels that rolled over us like boulders.
“You there! Don’t move! Stay where you are!”
I ducked my head over the parapet, visible, I knew, only as a dark protrusion among so many others. From my aerie I could see the squat form of Pat Bishop, the long neon gleam of the fire engine, the dark butterfly-shadowed figures of the men surrounding it.
Leon’s face was expressionless, a mushroom in shadow. “You little shit.”
“Come on, man,” I said. “There’s still time.”
“Time for what? A quick shag?”
“Leon, please. It’s not what you think.”
“No, really?” He began to laugh.
“Please, Leon. I know a way out. But we’ve got to hurry. My dad’s on his way—”
A silence, long as the grave.
Below us, the voices, all blurred together like bonfire smoke. Above us now, the Bell Tower with its overlooking balcony. In front of us, the well separating Bell Tower and Chapel roof; a stinking siphon-shaped depression, lined with gutters and pigeons’ nests, which sloped down to the narrow gullet between the buildings.
“Your dad?” echoed Leon.
Then came a sound from the rooftop behind us. I turned and saw a man on the walkway, blocking our escape. Fifty feet of roof lay between us; though the walkway was broad, the man shook and faltered as if on a tightrope, hands clenched, face stiff with concentration as he inched forward to intercept us.
“Stay there,” he said. “I’m coming to get you.”
It was John Snyde.
He couldn’t have seen our faces, then. We were both in shadow. Two ghosts on the rooftop—we could make it, I knew. The well that separated Chapel from Bell Tower was deep, but its throat was narrow—five feet at its widest point. I’d jumped it myself more times than I could remember, and even in the dark I knew the risk was small. My father would never dare follow us there. We could scramble up the roof’s incline, balance along the Bell Tower ledge, and jump onto the balcony, as I’d done before. From there, I knew a hundred places for us to hide.
I did not think beyond that. Once more in my mind we were Butch and Sundance; freeze-framed in the moment; forever heroes. All we needed was to make the jump.
I like to think I hesitated. That my actions were in some way determined by thought, and not the blind instinct of an animal on the run. But everything after that exists in a kind of vacuum. Perhaps that was the very moment when I ceased to dream; perhaps in that instant I experienced all the dream time I was ever likely to need; an end to dreams for the rest of my life.
At the time, though, it felt like waking up. Waking up all the way, after years of dreaming. Disconnected thoughts shot across my mind like meteors against a summer sky.
Leon, laughing, his mouth against my hair.
Leon and me, on the ride-on mower.
Leon and Francesca, whom he had never loved.
St. Oswald’s, and how close—how very close—I had come to winning the game.
Time stopped. In space, I hung like a cross of stars. On the one side, Leon. On the other, my father. As I said, I like to think I hesitated.
Then I looked at Leon.
Leon looked back.
We jumped.
QUEEN
1
St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys
And here it is at last, in all its killing glory. Anarchy has descended on St. Oswald’s like a plague; boys missing; lessons disrupted; many of my colleagues out of school. Devine has been suspended pending further enquiry (this means I’m back in my old office, though rarely has a victory given me less joy); and Grachvogel; and Light. Still more are being questioned, including Robbie Roach, who is naming colleagues left, right, and center in the hope of diverting suspicion away from himself.
Bob Strange has made it clear that my own presence here is merely an emergency measure. According to Allen-Jones, whose mother is on the Board of Governors, my future was discussed at some length at the last Governors’ meeting, with Dr. Pooley, whose son I “assaulted,” calling for my immediate suspension. In the light of recent events (and most of all in the absence of Bishop) there was no one else to speak for me, and Bob has made it clear that only our exceptional circumstances have deferred this perfectly legitimate course of action.