“Benedict.”
Theo was gazing up at the organ, its painted pipes high above the business of the church, almost to the roof. As he stood there, the door to the cathedral opened and a shaft of light sliced in; a dark figure, a man, Benedict thought, stood there before coming in and walking down an aisle toward a side chapel. Benedict could smell his cigarette smoke.
Theo called him. He had moved to the far right of the west door in front of what seemed likely to be the door to the organ loft. It was small and insignificant enough. Clearly it was locked, but Theo was feeling along the lintel above it. Then he moved to a funerary inscription a few yards away. He felt above the scrolls and carved urn. Shook off a spider.
He stood back. His eyes scanned the door and its immediate surroundings, then moved swiftly to a carved marble angel holding an open book. He stood on tiptoe, reached up, and then brandished a key.
“We can’t go up.” But even as he spoke, Benedict knew that they would.
“Oh, but we can.” The key turned easily in the lock.
Benedict knew his face was full of doubt, and he hated himself for it.
“For God’s sake, man. It was restored only twenty-five years ago, by Cavaillé-Coll, no less. And it’s five hundred years old. You know it is. You’re an organist: how can you not want to go up there?”
When Benedict still hesitated, Theo rushed on. “Look around. What do you see? They know what’s going to happen here. Even if you survive all this, what might you never see again, hear again? This organ.”
Benedict dipped his head to pass under the low arch and came to the stone steps of a spiral staircase. The treads were narrow and deep and, as he followed Theo upward, he held tight to a sagging rope handrail. At the top they reached scuffed floorboards. Theo was searching for a light. Eventually he found the oil lamp they both knew must be here and lit it with his cigarette lighter.
In front of them lay the marvel of pipes, bellows, and the mechanisms that revealed the secrets only organists saw. With another rasp of the flint, the light was lit over the console. It was stuffy up here, and the organ had not been played for a while, it seemed; there was light dust on the keys. He could hear pigeons on the roof, see specks of light through the timbers, but Theo seemed oblivious to anything but the organ itself. He unbuttoned his tunic and slung it to one side, sat at the console, legs extended, and eventually looked up at Benedict.
“You play it,” he said, after a pause. “It needs playing.” His gaze moved to the old bellows. There was no electricity here yet. “Five minutes. I can still do the bellows.” But he didn’t move. He was biting his lip.
Benedict just watched on, his breath slowing. Looked at Theo, his half-suppressed excitement, his creased uniform, his posture, slightly bent over, the cross of his suspenders; the way they buttoned to the center-back rise of his breeches. The pale cream shirt tight over his shoulder blades, the dark, damp patches under his arms. Finally, his hands, which had been capable of creating such worlds, turning noise into beauty, writhing in his lap. His healthy fingers moved slightly over the strange curvature of the damaged hand.
Benedict ached. He felt as if his heart would burst or shrivel. If he could only touch. He could touch, of course. There were a dozen reasons why he might touch, and just one why he never could.
Theo stood and moved over to the bellows; and as Benedict took his place at the unfamiliar console, he could hear Theo waking the creature sleeping in the roof. The rumblings, the wheeze, the inhalations of air into the bellows and regulators; each big organ had its own unique sound. Its coming to life was always a moment Benedict loved. Even here, illicitly, in Amiens, in wartime. Even where Theo would soon exhaust himself doing the work of two or more men. Benedict wondered, briefly, if Dr. Brewer had ever felt any of these things. Then he thought of the possibility of this monster being slaughtered by men of either side armed with high explosives.
He peered at the stops, just visible in the unsteady light. They were different, of course. In Gloucester he would see Choir, Great, Swell, Solo. Here they read Pédale, Grande Orgue, Positif, Récit. The arrangement of the stops was different too, and he moved his hands over them, a few inches above the keyboard, as if trying to understand them. He reached down and unlaced his boots, freed his feet to play.
To one side of the organ was a small, newish plate with the name of the restorer: Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, 1889. How little the old man, perhaps the greatest organ-maker ever, could have suspected what was to come as month after month he worked on this wondrously ancient organ to create the best possible sound in the last years of his life, in the last century.