Clive Barker - Sacrament

'What?'

'I'd have thought you'd be tired of watching animals by now.'

'Not a chance.'

'Were you always like this? I don't think you were.'

'No. I owe it to Steep. Of course he had ulterior motives. First you see it, then you kill it.'

'Then you put it in your scrapbook,' Frannie added. 'All neat and tidy.'

'And quiet,' Will said.

'Was quiet important?'

'Oh yes. He thinks we'll hear God better that way.'

Frannie mused on this a moment. 'Do you think he was born crazy?' she finally said.

There was another silence. Then Will said: 'I don't think he was born.'

The ferry was coming into Tobermory, its first and last stop before they slipped from the Sound and out into the open sea. They watched the approach from the bow, where Rosa was still seated. Tobermory was a small town, barely extending beyond the quayside, and the ship was at the dock no more than twenty minutes (long enough to unload three cars and a dozen passengers) before it was on its way. The swell became noticeably heavier once they cleared the northern tip of Mull, the waves bristling with white surf.

'I hope it doesn't get any worse than this,' Frannie remarked, 'or I'm going to get sea-sick.'

'We're in treacherous waters,' Rosa remarked; these the first words she'd uttered since Frannie and Will had joined her. 'The straits between Coll and Tiree are notorious.'

'How do you know?'

'I had a chat with young Hamish over there,' she said, nodding a sailor who was lounging against the railing ten yards from where Rosa sat.

'He's barely old enough to shave,' Will replied.

'Are you jealous then?' Rosa chuckled. 'Don't worry, I'm not going to do the dirty with him. Not in my present state. Though Lord knows he's a pretty thing, don't you think?'

'He's a little young for me.'

'Oh there's no such thing as too young,' Rosa said. 'If he can get hard he's old enough. That's always been my theory.'

Frannie's face reddened with fury and embarrassment. 'You're disgusting, you know that?' she said, and stalked off down the deck.

Will went after her, to calm her down, but she could not be calmed.

'That's how she got her claws into Sherwood,' she said. 'I've always suspected it. And there she is, crowing about it.'

'She didn't mention Sherwood.'

'She didn't have to. God, she's sickening. Sitting there lusting after some fifteen-year-old. I won't have anything more to do with her, Will.'

'Just put up with it for a few more hours,' Will said. 'We're stuck with her till we find Rukenau.'

'She doesn't know where she's going any more than we do,' Frannie said.

Will didn't say so, but he was tempted to agree. He'd hoped that by now Rosa would be in a more focused frame of mind; that the voyage would have somehow aroused buried memories in her: something to prepare them for whatever lay ahead. But if she felt anything, she was concealing it very effectively. 'Maybe it's time I had a heart to heart with her,' Will said.

'She hasn't got a heart,' Frannie said. 'She's just a dirty-minded old ... whatever she is.' She glanced up at him. 'Go talk to her. You won't get any answers. Just keep her away from me.' With that she headed off towards the stern. Will almost went after her to try to placate her further, but what was the use? She had every right to her disgust. For himself, however, he found it impossible to feel any great horror at who or what Rosa was, despite the fact that she'd taken Hugo's life. He puzzled over this as he returned to the bow. Was there some flaw in his nature that kept him from feeling the revulsion Frannie felt?

He was stopped in his tracks by two gulls, who came swooping down in front of him to squabble over a crust of waterlogged bread one of them had dropped in flight. It was a vicious and raucous set-to, beaks stabbing, wings thrashing, and as he watched it played out he had his question answered. He watched Rosa the way he watched the gulls. The way, in fact, he'd watched thousands of animals over the years. He made no moral judgments about her because they weren't applicable. There was no use judging her by human standards. She was no more human than the gulls squabbling in front of him. Perhaps that was her tragedy: perhaps, like the gulls, it was her glory.

'It was just a little joke,' Rosa said when he came back to sit beside her. 'That woman's got no sense of humour.' The Claymore was swinging around, and a lowlying island was coming into view. 'Hamish tells me this is Coll,' Rosa said, getting up and leaning against the railing.

The island was in stark contrast to the lush wooded slopes of Mull; flat and undistinguished.

'I don't suppose you recognize any of this?' Will asked her.

'No,' she said. 'But this isn't where we're getting off. This is the sister island. Tiree's much more fertile. The Land of Corn, they used to call it.'

'Did you get all this from Hamish?' Rosa nodded. 'Useful lad,' Will said.

'Men have their uses,' she said. 'But you know that.' She gave Will a shy little glance. 'You live in San Francisco, yes?'

'Yes.'

'I love that city. There used to a drag bar on Castro Street I'd always frequent when we were in the city. I forget its name now, but it was owned by a lovely old queen called Lenny something or other. This amuses you?'

'Somewhat. The idea of you and Steep in a drag bar.'

'Oh, Steep was never with me. It would have sickened him. But I always enjoyed the company of men who like to play the woman. My sweet viados in Milan; oh my, some of them were so beautiful.'

If the conversation over breakfast had been strange, this was a damn sight stranger, Will thought. Just about the last thing he'd expected to do on this voyage was to listen to Rosa extol the virtues of cross-dressing.

'I've never understood what was so interesting about it,' Will said.

'I've always loved things that weren't what they seemed,' Rosa replied. 'And for a man to deny his own sex, and corset himself and paint himself, and be something that he isn't because it touches a place in his heart ... that has a kind of poetry about it, to my mind.' She smiled. 'And I learned a lot from some of those men, about how to pretend.'

'Pretend to be a woman, you mean?'

Rosa nodded. 'I'm a confection too, you see,' she said, with more than a trace of self-deprecation. 'My name isn't even Rosa McGee. I heard the name in a street in Newcastle; somebody calling for Rosa, Rosa McGee, and I thought: that's the name for me. Steep got his name from a sign he saw. A spice importer; that was the original Steep. Jacob liked the sound of it so he took it. I think he murdered the man later.'

'Murdered him for his name?'

'Perhaps more for the fun of it. He was vicious, when he was young. He thought it was his duty to his sex to be cruel. Pick up a newspaper, and it's plain what men are like.'

'Not every man kills things for the pleasure of it.'

'Oh, that's not what he learned,' Rosa said, with a look of weary frustration at Will's stupidity. 'I took as much pleasure in killing as he did. No ... what he learned was to pretend there was purpose in it.'

'How young were you when he was learning? Were you children?'

'Oh no. We were never children. At least not that I remember.'

'So before you chose to be Rosa, who were you?'

'I don't know. We were with Rukenau. I don't think we needed names. We were his instruments.'

'Building the Domus Mundi?' She shook her head. 'So do you not remember being with him?'

'Why should I? Do you remember what you were before you were Will Rabjohns?'

'I remember being a baby, very vaguely. At least I think I do.'

'It may be the same for me, once I get to Tiree.'

The Claymore was now perhaps fifteen yards from the jetty at Coll, and with the ease of one who'd performed the duty countless times, the skipper brought the vessel alongside. There was a flurry of activity below, as cars were driven off and passengers disembarked. Will paid little attention. He had more questions to ask of Rosa, and was determined to voice them all while she was in a voluble mood.