Chapter 13 - An Inconvenient Corpse

                                    

                                          

Raphael Gabriel Brandon Alcott was only half awake, but even half informed him that absolutely everything was wrong.
The bed was soft and warm enough, to be sure, but it was not his bed, and he had a peculiar, distant sense that he'd not gone to it willingly. He opened his eyes a fraction to survey his surroundings, finding them without exception totally unfamiliar. It was thus not strange, he thought, that he should feel a bit at sea, yet he had the sensation that his unease stemmed not so much from the myriad alien things that occupied his immediate vicinity but from the single entity remarkable for its absence.
Abernathy. The name formed in his mind and on his lips in the same instant. Half dreading, half hoping to discover the other boy beside him, he rolled cautiously to his left, but found his instinct had been correct: the other side of the bed lay empty, the mattress long since cold. And oh, but it was cold!
Abernathy. The frigid weather. The vaguely unsettling bed, the unfamiliar sleeping attire, the awful swimming sensation in his head, the painful lump on the back of it ... he inhaled, and the first deep breath of the freezing air shocked him violently back to his senses. All at once he remembered where he was, and, an instant later, why. These were hardly the kinds of realizations calculated to send one flying out of bed with a smile on one's face, all eagerness to face the day, and he retreated under the bedclothes and let out a bellowing groan comprised equally of anger, frustration and despair. 
It was dark there, under the bedclothes. Dark and warm. Closing his eyes Rafe, too, gave way to a moment of self-pity. Nearly half a lifetime of gathering secrets and storing up dreams, of nights when his pillow was wet with tears and days when only the promise of some brief freedom had kept him from plunging altogether into despair – all, it seemed, had come to naught. In the end, his plans and pains had only brought him here, delivered like an inconvenient corpse to this strange stone tower locked in ice. As for his stone, now holding only a cruel reminder of all that was forever lost, how could it ever bring him solace again?
The stone. My God, the stone! Where was it? He tore the covers back and sat up bolt upright, scanning the room in wide-eyed terror for his clothes, then sagged in relief as he recalled leaving them to dry by the fire the night before. Subsiding back onto his elbows, he took in his surroundings with more deliberation.
The chamber was spare and simple as the quarters of an only slightly worldly monk, so different from the room above that it seemed almost a reproach to those plush carpets and striped silks. Floor, ceiling and hearth were bare stone, the curving walls having been skimmed over with a thick coating of white plaster. There were two sets of arched twin windows, one with a worn-looking reading chair and side table beneath it, and a small blue-painted dresser against the far wall. The bed was of brass, twining elegantly at head and foot, with two shabby, mismatched nightstands of white-painted wood.
The room held little else. He leaned back against the pillow, intending to burrow under the blankets again, but something on the nightstand caught his eye. Propped against the candlestick was a square of cream-colored paper, bearing a single word in neat, compact letters: Alcott. He picked it up to find that the single sheet bore two separate messages, one on each side. One was clearly the work of the same bold, precise hand that had scribed his name, but the other was penned in a different style, rather more spindly than the first and somehow faintly sinister.
He read the bolder note first. 
Alcott,
It was the headmaster's intent that I inform you directly of his instructions, but I thought it best for you to awaken and read for yourself in your own time. I will collect you to be presented to the Doctor at the appointed hour, but in the interim please consider my books and study materials at your complete disposal. You are surely hungry and will therefore be so pleased to see your breakfast tray upstairs that you will not be unduly distressed by the notable lack of tea thereon. This is not the kitchen's failure, but mine – I having neglected to advise the kitchen-boy that my own stores were so close to depletion. In consolation, may I offer you the use of the toasting fork in the grate? Tea is tea, but fresh buttered toast with honey is not to be sneezed at, I think. Eat up, rest up, and settle in as best you can, and take heart: this place is really not so bad.
It was signed with a capital A that was somehow exuberant. Abernathy's warmth and good spirits seemed to radiate from the page, but Sewell's message on the back of it, composed in that spidery hand and bearing neither salutation or signature, gave Rafe an uncomfortable chill. 
Inform Alcott he is to keep to his rooms today. He may expect his morning and mid-day meals brought up to him, as well as his trunks when they arrive, and a maid will be sent to make up his chamber after her regular morning duties are discharged. You are directed to present him to me in my study at half past five, which time I have fixed to speak with you both about Alcott's future prospects as a student of this institution. 
Well, there it was. He had a fervent wish to crumple the note in a ball, toss it in a corner, and (bread and honey notwithstanding) fling the covers back over his head. Instead, he sighed, exhaling a small cloud of frozen breath, and drew back the counterpane. He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, half-consciously bracing for the kiss of frigid stone on his bare feet. 
It did not come. Leaning forward, he saw that they had come to rest not upon cold stone but a pair of carpet slippers, thoughtfully positioned next to the bed exactly where his feet would fall when he got out of it. Abernathy's work, no doubt. He smiled and poked in a foot experimentally, finding the slippers a good deal too small but still far better than going barefoot. Thus fortified, he rose from the bed with the intent to look out at his new surroundings, but found his step faltering before he reached the window. He was, it seemed, not quite up to taking stock. After breakfast, perhaps.
In search of the promised repast, he headed for the door, finding Abernathy's dressing-gown thoughtfully draped over a hook on the back of it. Like the slippers, it was less than adequate, but he shrugged into it without hesitation. He pulled the door open and the frigid air outside it struck him with shocking intensity: he had thought the fire in the bedchamber useless against the chill, but the room at his back now seemed cozy as a rabbit's nest. Resolutely, he pulled the door shut behind him and stepped into the passageway.
It was colder than the bedchamber, and darker. Weak daylight filtered in from a small window to his left, allowing him to make out the staircase he had descended by candlelight the night before. To his right, all was black (this was, he recalled, the stone wall that cut the passage short). In the wall opposite were two doors – one directly in front of him and the other at the foot of the stairs. Both were closed.
It stood to reason that the facing door would lead to his own quarters, and he opened it to find that it was so. The room was a mirror image of Abernathy's. A bed, the same size as Abernathy's and flanked by two nightstands (also mismatched) was placed with its head against the left wall. A fireplace was to his right, where it must stand back-to-back with Abernathy's. The stonework that cut off the passage, he realized, was not a wall at all but a common flue at the core of the suite. Recalling a half-remarked detail from Abernathy's room, he moved past the hearth to examine the wall. Indeed there was a door there, twin to the one he had observed, and he pushed it open to reveal an odd little chamber. 
There was little save dust where he stood, but at the far end he could see a great assortment of trunks and boxes, vestments and boots, presumably the property of Abernathy. The room, he saw, was not a room at all but a large closet, serving both occupants and connecting the bedchambers. There was a pair of armoires, too, with the open door of the nearer one showing it standing empty and waiting to be filled, presumably by him. 
He stepped in for a better look and found that the room was surprisingly bright. A heavy coat of frost covered the single windowpane, but the sun had deigned to come out and the frozen water glittered like crystal. A clear circle of glass lay open in the center of the ice, the shape a warm mouth might create with a puff or two of breath, and the small confirmation of Abernathy's passing buoyed his spirits. Allowing himself no time for thought or hesitation, he stepped towards the window and peered through the circle at his new home.