“Not yet, boy. Not for a lifetime.”
And Bod realized why he had danced as one of the living, and not as one of the crew that had walked down the hill, and he said only, “I see…I think.”
He went down the hill at a run, a ten-year-old boy in a hurry, going so fast he almost tripped over Digby Poole (1785–1860, As I Am So Shall You Be), righting himself by effort of will, and charged down to the old chapel, scared he would miss Silas, that his guardian would already be gone by the time Bod got there.
Bod sat down on the bench.
There was a movement beside him, although he heard nothing move, and his guardian said, “Good evening, Bod.”
“You were there last night,” said Bod. “Don’t try and say you weren’t there or something because I know you were.”
“Yes,” said Silas.
“I danced with her. With the lady on the white horse.”
“Did you?”
“You saw it! You watched us! The living and the dead! We were dancing. Why won’t anyone talk about it?”
“Because there are mysteries. Because there are things that people are forbidden to speak about. Because there are things they do not remember.”
“But you’re speaking about it right now. We’re talking about the Macabray.”
“I have not danced it,” said Silas.
“You saw it, though.”
Silas said only, “I don’t know what I saw.”
“I danced with the lady, Silas!” exclaimed Bod. His guardian looked almost heartbroken then, and Bod found himself scared, like a child who has woken a sleeping panther.
But all Silas said was, “This conversation is at an end.”
Bod might have said something—there were a hundred things he wanted to say, unwise though it might have been to say them—when something distracted his attention: a rustling noise, soft and gentle, and a cold feather-touch as something brushed his face.
All thoughts of dancing were forgotten then, and his fear was replaced with delight and with awe.
It was the third time in his life that he had seen it.
“Look, Silas, it’s snowing!” he said, joy filling his chest and his head, leaving no room for anything else. “It’s really snow!”
INTERLUDE
The Convocation
A SMALL SIGN IN THE hotel lobby announced that the Washington Room was taken that night by a private function, although there was no information as to what kind of function this might be. Truthfully, if you were to look at the inhabitants of the Washington Room that night, you would have no clearer idea of what was happening, although a rapid glance would tell you that there were no women in there. They were all men, that much was clear, and they sat at round dinner tables, and they were finishing their dessert.
There were about a hundred of them, all in sober black suits, but the suits were all they had in common. They had white hair or dark hair or fair hair or red hair or no hair at all. They had friendly faces or unfriendly, helpful or sullen, open or secretive, brutish or sensitive. The majority of them were pink-skinned, but there were black-skinned men and brown-skinned. They were European, African, Indian, Chinese, South American, Filipino, American. They all spoke English when they talked to each other, or to the waiters, but the accents were as diverse as the gentlemen. They came from all across Europe and from all over the world.
The men in black suits sat around their tables while up on a platform one of their number, a wide, cheery man dressed in a morning suit, as if he had just come from a wedding, was announcing Good Deeds Done. Children from poor places had been taken on exotic holidays. A bus had been bought to take people who needed it on excursions.
The man Jack sat at the front center table, beside a dapper man with silver-white hair. They were waiting for coffee.
“Time’s a-ticking,” said the silver-haired man, “and we’re none of us getting any younger.”
The man Jack said, “I’ve been thinking. That business in San Francisco four years ago—”
“Was unfortunate, but like the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, absolutely nothing to do with the case. You failed, Jack. You were meant to take care of them all. That included the baby. Especially the baby. Nearly only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.”