Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

“Cantor,” he whispers curtly. I can only imagine the words that will follow.

“Caplain will have a word with you,” he says. “Brother Ernesto, you are needed in the chapel.”

Ernesto refuses to look at me as he nods respectfully, wipes his hands.

Fear of being associated with me.

I’m next, I think.

First Lazlo, and now me.

A high, raspy voice bids me to enter.

Inside, the quarters are different than when it belonged to Caplain Amita. Far more spare. The shelves of books are gone, as are the illustrations of the saints, the charts of ocean and coast. Now a single crucifix adorns the wall, the lamps and grease wicks casting a long shadow of Jesus’s broken body. Solemn and austere.

Caplain Marston sits at his desk as though it has always been his, back turned to me, scribbling something on a large sheaf of parchment while I wait in silence.

Crude notes arranged upon staves.

“Cantor,” he finally says before even stopping with his notating. Eventually, he does turn, folding his long fingers together at his lap. On his face, a most uncharacteristic smile. Were it to be found on the face of any other man, I could mistake it for genuine. But here, on this face, something wrong in it. He says, “I invited you here because I know how… close you were with Caplain Amita… the relationship you shared. You must be feeling quite a weight still so soon after his passing.”

“Yes, Caplain,” I say softly, carefully. Not the response I had expected. My knees still feel weak beneath me. I try to slow my breathing.

“You shared a confidence with him,” he says.

“I did. Indeed.”

“I wonder, Cantor, if we might build a similar relationship. A similar trust…”

I see the key hanging about his neck on a chain. The false missile key. He continues. “For you see, Cantor, I think there might be something… weighing upon your soul. Something you might need to confess.”

My heart races. Does he know? That I’m a girl? About the key? Did Caplain Amita tell him these secrets before death took him?

“Chorister Lazlo,” the caplain says.

My face burns hot. The lump in my throat has grown. Big as a stone I can’t swallow.

An expression of great, disingenuous pain crosses the caplain’s face. “He is sick, I am afraid, Cantor. Sick, and there is only one place for him.

“I blame myself, partly,” he continues. “You see, there’s a reason why we don’t send Choristers Topside. A reason why we normally send the… seasoned. The steadfast faithful. For the work that we must do is indeed bloody. Wrathful. And the Topsiders are deceitful at every turn. Their lies are like a disease. Their ideas. You see, some ideas can be an even worse sickness than one that ails the body. A sickness of the mind. Of the soul. Dear Lazlo confessed this to me. Confessed the… heretical thinking that might tear apart our order in these, our final, our most important days. You see, if one part of the body fails, so do the others. Like this very machine. The Leviathan . Every function important to the whole.”

Something darker in his eyes now, the way he is looking down his long nose at me. “Like the Demis and the other Forgotten, he must be purified by the presence of God. By the energy that drives us. His light.”

Caplain Marston lifts his chin as he says these last words, eyes closed, as though in prayer. Then he stands, approaches me, places a lank hand on my shoulder. “Now I must ask you a question.”

My heart races. Thrums.

He rounds behind me. “Cantor Remy, I know you were close with Chorister Lazlo. Please tell me… did he confide any of these… sick thoughts to you? I assure you, you will not be punished for speaking honestly with me.”

I fight the urge to recoil. To break down right here and now.

He already knows—if St. John told him about Lazlo, then he has told Marston that I was the one Lazlo was speaking to. So, he will know if I lie. But if I tell the truth…

“He did confess some… dark thoughts to me, Caplain,” I say. “I’m sorry I did not tell you immediately. I was just… I was worried for him.”

Caplain Marston circles around to face me, peering down at me, head hunched. “And what exactly did he say?”

The truth. That’s the only way out of this.

I clear my throat. “He said that… he wondered if we’d… if we’d been wrong, this whole time. What if the war was over? What if the Topsiders weren’t evil after all?”

The caplain nods thoughtfully. “What an easier, kinder world this would be were that true. And what did you tell him?” he asks, turning away, slowly pacing the length of the cabin.

“That the Topsiders were deceivers, of course. That they were trying to… evoke guilt from him. I told him…” Breathe! “… that he shouldn’t be saying such things.”

“And rightly so,” Caplain Marston says, finally ceasing his slow pace, turning on his heels, standing squarely before me, crossing his arms. “Your will is strong, Cantor. This is why you have risen to be the prime voice of our chorus. Unlike Lazlo, I know you are no lost soul. Your faith, steadfast. Your voice is a divine gift—lifts the heart of every man here. Every soul, into the light.”

There’s that dark light in his eyes again, though I’m not sure if it is the fire of conviction. In fact, I’m not sure that he believes me at all. But that doesn’t seem to matter.

“Perhaps Lazlo told you something about the interloper we’ve brought aboard as well?”

Did St. John hear all of what Lazlo confessed to me?

“He did… he did tell me something about the prisoner,” I say.

“Indeed, the interloper we have brought on board is a female.”

That very word— female —strikes a new, icy chord down the middle of me.

“You understand,” he says, “we must keep silent. It would confuse your fellow Brothers and Choristers. We would not have brought this woman on board if not absolutely necessary. And she will be expelled as soon as possible. Tell me, have you shared this or any of the other ideas Lazlo confided in you?” he presses. “His doubt?”

“Of course not, Caplain. I wish I had not heard it myself,” I say. The tears begin to well up, unbidden, once more.

“It is okay to mourn, Cantor Remy. I, too, was fond of young Lazlo…”

“Perhaps his punishment need not be so severe—I know Lazlo… I knew him well. He has never faltered before.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Caplain,” I add, the appropriate decorum.

Caplain Marston presses his lips together—perhaps taken aback at first—then closes his eyes, nods heavily, as though this is all a burden, a weight on him. “Always the fearless heart. You know as well as I there is no way for him to return. He must remain. We must all be spiritually resolved on the day of the Last Judgment.

“No,” he says, seating himself once more, “you may pray for him, Cantor. Pray for his soul. It might be purified and saved yet.”

“Th-thank you, Caplain,” I say wiping my eyes. But gone is the sadness. I feel a heat building inside me. A quaking.

The caplain continues. “In his final days, you may have noticed that Caplain Amita was also not himself as well…”

“Caplain?”

“He, too, might have also confessed to you some… notion of a crisis of faith. Sometimes, you see, it’s as easy to lose heart at the end of a life as it is in the middle. Especially when you don’t get to see a vision through to its end.”

“No… no, I don’t believe so. Caplain Amita has never faltered in his faith… that I know. Not in my presence.”

A sigh.

Perhaps disappointment.