The Siege of Reginald Hill Read online

  I spoke very softly. “They can’t possibly get here in time, can they?” Just maybe, with the longer estimate. No chance, with the shorter.

  Margo grimaced. “They’re giving it their best shot, so you do your best too.”

  Ah. She didn’t really think I would see them, she merely told me for…motivational purposes. My dear stubborn sister.

  The tears had finally trailed off a bit, a black blanket of exhaustion replacing them. It would’ve been nice if it cloaked the other feelings, but instead it just seemed to combine badly with them. Bleakly. Maybe I would fall asleep soon.

  Oh… “Margo, I haven’t actually done evening prayer yet, not properly. Could you read it to me?” My voice rasped, my chest burning worse than ever. I’d overdone the talking.

  “Kyle, you’re not well. You don’t have to do it.”

  “I want to. Please?”

  Margo sighed and picked up the Office book from where she’d deposited it out of my reach.

  “Oh no, here we go a-blooming-gain,” muttered Uncle Reginald. “I suppose there’s no chance of a pair of earplugs?”

  “You suppose rightly.” Coolly, Margo opened the book, found the place and began to read, never looking at him—but she kept her voice loud enough to be clearly audible all over the room.

  I tried to listen, to concentrate, to pray, but that exhaustion gnawed all around the edges of my consciousness and I just wasn’t sure how long I could stay…

  I knelt in Saint Peter’s, trying to pray, trying desperately to pray. If only I could quiet my thoughts. They buzzed like wasps, loud and aggressive, drowning out everything.

  Especially that still, small voice in my soul.

  Okay, if I couldn’t pray, I would try and reason through everything. Surely this time it would help.

  Bane… No. No, I couldn’t even start on that one. Just the thought of it and that angry buzzing in my head intensified, rage gripping my brain like a vice. If I so much as tried to think, ‘Bane’s been going through a tough time,’ something would explode. Probably my head.

  Margo, then. My little sis. Who’d pointed a gun at me and thrown me out of her home. Told me she never wanted to see me, ever again.

  Okay, so she’d taken that back, the other day up in the hospital.

  And I, I’d said to her…I’d said some harsh things. Things I didn’t mean, things I shouldn’t have said… I should apologise. I should.

  But…but she shouldn’t have done what she did. Risked all our lives, risked the future of every Believer and reAssignee in the whole Bloc. For a murderer. Snakey’s murderer.

  Of course, forgiveness was important, but she could have just sat there and forgiven Georg Friedrich verbally. There was too much at stake to try to forgive so…so completely hands on, and for someone who didn’t even deserve it…

  …oh? So you deserve it, do you, Kyle?…

  I just about caught the soft whisper over that incessant buzz of anger and…hate?

  So easy to pretend I hadn’t.

  Someone had propped a photo of Snakey at the foot of the little side altar in front of which I was failing to pray. Hard to believe he wouldn’t push aside the curtain and walk in with a cheerful grin and a jest: “Praying again, Deacon Gecko? You are without doubt the most devout lizard I’ve ever met, si?”

  I’d laugh and tease him back: “How many of your lizard-friends are in seminary, O slithery one?”

  That would cause another grin. “Good point, Deacon Gecko, good point…”

  The imagining faded. I was alone in the chapel and would remain alone in the chapel, because Snakey was dead, as dead as J…

  I jerked my mind from my little brother, from that grief overload.

  I did believe in forgiveness. I did! If Margo could have saved Georg Friedrich with no risk to anyone, then great. I’d have been behind her. I would. But how could she risk us all? Didn’t she care about us? Not even her own family?

  …he who does the will of the one who sent me is my mother, and sister, and brother…

  No! I pushed the words away as they tried to whisper through my mind. What about one’s duty to the innocent? The safety of the many had to come before the fate of one stray.

  …what man who has a hundred sheep…

  “It’s not the same!” Only when I heard my own tortured voice did I realise that I’d whispered it to the night silence.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere. My mind ran in circles.

  …that’s because you’re not listening…

  I am listening, but none of it makes sense! I had, had, had to make sense of all this…

  …why not just forgive?…

  It’s not that simple!

  …why isn’t it?…

  I can’t…I can’t work out how I feel about any of this. I can’t make sense of any of it!

  …does forgiveness have to make sense?…

  Yes, it does! Everything has to make sense!

  …does it?…

  I could go to my sister and…and say sorry. Forgive what she’d said and done to me. But that…that would be like saying that what Georg Friedrich did to Snakey didn’t matter! Wouldn’t it? Which was like saying that what the EuroGov did to Joe didn’t matter! Like what Bane did didn’t…

  The buzzing filled my head again, deafening me. I found myself on my feet. I wanted to punch Bane until his face turned purple and bled…

  “God, help me…” I whispered.

  But I could hear nothing but rage.

  I wrapped my arms around my head, shaking. I wanted to let the hate go. Wanted it so much. It was like acid searing my soul. But if I let it go, there’d be nothing to mask the grief.

  And that agony hurt even worse.

  My eyes flew open and I tried to sit up. Bad mistake. Needles of pain impaled my legs, my stomach, my hands—and my chest outdid them all. Gingerly, I relaxed back against the pillows. My heart pounded like a herd of stampeding wildebeest and cold sweat coated my forehead. I gasped for breath, whether from the nightmarish memories of that time—more than a decade ago now—when Margo and I had been so horribly at odds over Bane’s behaviour and her risky rescue of Georg Friedrich or because of my dissolving lungs, I’d no idea.

  “Awake, are you?” A cold voice penetrated my ears. “Finally. Perhaps you can stop all that moaning and let an old man get his sleep.”

  With effort, I focussed my gaze on the person in the bed opposite. Wait, had someone…

  Yes, the morphine machine showed the agreed level. The acute pain had only come from my foolhardy attempt at moving. I reached for the button but could barely lift my hand. So weak, now. I used my three fingers to walk my arm across the sheets, then managed to claw my way high enough to reach the button. Knocking a full twenty bars off, I let my hand flop back onto the bed and looked at Uncle Reginald again.

  Somehow, I spoke composedly. “Have I been disturbing you, Uncle Reginald? I’m very sorry. I had something of a nightmare.”

  “Oh?” Hill snorted. “Twenty eager naked young women chasing you, was it?”

  I didn’t answer. My body shook, clammy and chill. Twenty naked women—or even a hundred—and I could’ve whispered a prayer of thanks to God for the beauty of his creation, a rather longer prayer for chastity, and gone back to sleep. This nightmare—this memory—left me flayed.

  Yes, this explained why the feeling of God’s absence freaked me out so much. The last time I’d lost my sense of the Lord so completely…it had been the blackest time in my entire life. My fault, too. Like the psalm…

  When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast toward you.

  But what was the next verse?

  Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.

  Yes. I tried to drag my thoughts out of the dark past—all that was over, done, long resolved—but they stuck there, as though caught in quicksand. How had I made such a mess of things? Even as I’d been rampaging around, going f
rom bad to worse, getting everything wrong, deep down I’d known what I needed to do. That one, single, simple thing.

  Love.

  Specifically: forgive. But I’d failed…no, I’d refused…for far too long. Shame enveloped me, just thinking about it. And sorrow. Had I ever really apologised properly to Margo? Was it even possible to apologise properly for something like that?

  I groped feebly—but urgently—for the call button and pressed it. What if this poison took me before I could speak to her?

  In bare moments an unfamiliar nurse stood beside the bed, looking down anxiously. “Father Kyle? Are you alright?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’d really like to speak to my sister.”

  Relief covered the kind face under the veil—but still some surprise. “Of course. I will get someone to fetch her at once. Are you sure you don’t require any medical assistance, Father Kyle?”

  “No, really, it’s just…just a personal matter.”

  Only when she turned to go did the reason for her surprise occur to me.

  “Wait! What time is it?”

  “It’s ten past two, Father Kyle.”

  My eyes went to the dark, curtained windows. Ten past two in the morning. Oops. “I’m sorry, Sister, I didn’t realise it was so late…early… Please don’t wake her. I can speak to her in the morning, Lord willing. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, Father Kyle.” Smiling, she went on her way.

  I lay still—not that I could do anything else—trying to slow my breathing and calm down. If only it wasn’t the middle of the night. My need to speak to Margo made my chest ache. An emotional pain to match the physical and spiritual ones. But I couldn’t wake her. Not when she’d believed me asleep for the night and gone to catch a few winks herself. She still got so tired after those complications following Georgie’s birth.

  I tried to concentrate on how lovely it would be to see little Georgie again—to meet him properly—struggling to take my mind off my stomach-churning emotions.

  Deep, steady almost-snores from opposite—Uncle Reginald had settled off again. He might grumble when I fell asleep on him, but he could nap for the EuroBloc himself.

  However hard I tried to calm myself, my breathing remained rough and catchy. Hmm. Not the dream, then. The poison making itself felt. But Margo had said a day, minimum, so surely I’d still be around in the morning to speak to her?

  I did so desperately want to speak to her. But I couldn’t bear to wake her. Not with everything she had to deal with at the moment, I just couldn’t…

  “Kyle?”

  I struggled free from the drowsy state of hag-ridden half-sleep into which I’d sunk, just in time to make a supreme effort and catch Margo’s hand as she reached for the morphine machine. Was it morning? A glance at the curtains showed otherwise. “Margo? What time is it?”

  “Twenty past two.” With a sigh, she withdrew her hand. “Are you alright?”

  “Twenty past…” She wore a dressing gown… “But I said not to wake you! I’m so sorry, Margo! I thought the nurse understood that I’d changed my mind.”

  “She did. She guessed—correctly—that I’d like to be woken anyway. What’s wrong? Do you need Doctor Fathiya?”

  Uncle Reginald slept on. Ten minutes’ silence had left him deeply enough asleep that our soft voices didn’t disturb him. No question all humans were hard-wired to react more to sounds of distress. Even Reginald Hill.

  “No, I don’t need a doctor. I need to apologise. To you…” I managed to grip her hand again, tightly, irrationally afraid she might get away before I’d finished.

  “To me? For what?”

  “How I treated you. You and Bane and…and Georg. I totally failed you. I said such hateful things to you. I hated Georg. Wanted him dead. Wasn’t there for you, for Bane…”

  Margo’s eyes widened, her lips parting. “Kyle—”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to tell you…”

  “Kyle! You did tell me. We apologised to each other, remember? And we put it behind us and moved on. At least, I thought we did. It was so long ago, Kyle. I was pregnant with Luc. He’s eleven now. Where on earth has this come from?”

  Her bemusement confused me, drying up my flow of words. My heart, barely slowed after the dream, pounded uncomfortably. I felt so…rattled. Sick at heart. Filled with horror at my past sins. With that Absence, everything felt so like then. “I…I dreamt…of that time…”

  Margo ran a cloth over my damp forehead; her fingers brushed my hair into place. “Shhh, Kyle. Calm down. Everything’s fine between us. It’s been fine for a long, long time. And with Bane. And with Georg. You come to dinner along with Georg at least once every visit, right? We’re all great friends now.”

  That…that was true. I relaxed against the pillows as she mopped the cold sweat from my neck. Had I got a touch…hysterical from the dream? I was on morphine, after all…

  That time was past and gone. But its shadow loomed over me in the night darkness. “Will you stay?” I whispered. Immediately, guilt pricked me. “No, you should go back to bed. I’m perfectly alright. I think maybe the morphine scrambled me up a little.”

  Margo snorted. “Well, maybe. Though goodness knows your dosage is low enough. I’m staying, anyway. If I’d known you’d wake up in the night, I wouldn’t have left.”

  “You need to sleep, Margo.”

  “I’m fine. Look, I’ll grab this extra pillow, put it like this, and sit up here—if it doesn’t hurt you. I can doze very comfortably like this.” Suiting action to word, Margo positioned an extra pillow against the headboard of my bed and squeezed herself into the space beside my pillows.

  The slight movements of the mattress did hurt, but I offered it up with all my other pains and betrayed no sign of it. Fine once she was settled, anyway.

  “Rest, Kyle.” She stroked my hair. “Get some rest.”

  Uncle Reginald was out like a light; I might as well get some shut-eye too. Margo might sleep, then, as well…

  MARGO

  Kyle’s pain-tense face smoothed as sleep took him. As soon as he was well out of it, I slowly, carefully, leant forward and put the morphine back up to a sensible level. Why was he being so funny about it?

  Impossible to be angry with him, at the moment.

  Almost as impossible to believe that in less than a day, my kind, brave, infuriating big brother would be dead.

  Except…remembering how weakly he’d gripped my hand just now, even when clinging as tight as he could, it wasn’t quite so impossible. He was weakening fast.

  Lord, why do you have to take him? I stroked my brother’s sleeping head gently, tidying his short hair, so much darker brown than mine. Won’t you please let us keep him? Even just for a very little while longer? Please? Just a little while longer?

  My neck ached fiercely. I opened my eyes, remembering just in time not to move and hurt Kyle. He still slept, his face relaxed and pain-free. I shot a glance over at Hill. Awake and watching me. I looked away quickly. If the Lord granted me life, Hill would get his forgiveness, but—God forgive me—I really could only cope with one emotionally excruciating business at a time.

  Surely I hadn’t jolted the mattress at all? But Kyle was stirring, his face tightening, his eyelids fluttering for a few moments before opening all the way.

  He promptly smiled at me, of course. “Good morning, Margo.” His voice was a feeble rasp.

  Somehow, I managed to smile back. “Good morning, Kyle.”

  His eyes moved across to Hill and, switching to English with scrupulous politeness, he struggled to raise his voice, a flicker of pain crossing his face. “Good morning, Uncle Reginald.”

  I tried not to scowl at the affectionate title. Maybe Kyle really was a saint.

  Reginald Hill gave a tiny nod. “Crazy boy.” But he spoke to Kyle more coldly than usual.

  What was wrong with him? Why had Kyle been reading at him like that last nigh
t, anyway?

  Hill’s cool response seemed to make Kyle awfully happy, though. His grin would’ve gone ear to ear, had he not tamped it down.

  “Would you like me to read morning prayer, Kyle?” He’d try to do it himself, otherwise.

  Kyle’s smile went up a notch again. “That would be lovely, Margo. Though, first…” He struggled to raise his hand, to reach that dratted morphine machine.

  “Leave it, Kyle!”

  He ignored me. Down went the level. Flop went his exhausted arm onto the bed. On came his smile. His tired smile, for all he’d just woken up. “Morning prayer?” he suggested brightly.

  I complied.

  Kyle dozed off briefly in the middle of one psalm but didn’t seem to realise, so I simply kept going. When I finished he stirred enough to smile and thank me. But once I’d put the book to one side, his eyes opened again and his hand twitched as though to detain me.

  “Margo, I’ve been meaning to ask. Could you find me a new cord?”

  “Cord?”

  His fingers moved towards his waist.

  “Oh, a confraternity cord? Did you lose yours?”

  He nodded. “It’s not urgent, but…well, I did always expect to be buried in it, you see.”

  I swallowed hard, my heart clenching, my eyes pricking. “I’ll get one for you, Kyle.” It wouldn’t be hard. Practically everyone I knew had one, including Bane and myself. If a new one wasn’t to be found, any guy with the right sized waist would be happy to donate theirs, no doubt.

  “Thank you.” He spoke so weakly yet seemed so calm.

  “Kyle…”

  “Umm?”

  The question forced its way out at last. “Are you…scared?”

  He met my gaze, and for a moment I feared he would give the maddening big brotherly—or priestly?—response: Of what?

  Instead, his eyes serene as a still pool, he just said, “No.”

  With a lump in my throat, shame in my heart and awe in my mind, I looked away.

  Hill still watched us.

  KYLE