This part is inspired in large part by the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia. I do so love my Catholic ceremony, imagery, philosophy, and issues of guilt. ;-)
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In his explorations of the buildings of the school, Gabriel had gone many times through the rafters of the bell tower. The time at St. Michael’s was often kept with the ringing of bells, from the beginning of the school day at seven in morning and every hour until the day’s end at nine at night. The bells housed in the tower there were a varied assortment, some new, some relics brought in from across the world, burnished bright or tarnished with age, plainly made or ornately designed. He had examined each of them in turn as climbed. Some were for the keeping of time, some were for occasions based on their histories. But there was one among them more special than any.
She was a grand and ancient bell, French-made and rich brass, so artfully cast and engraved that even in the three hundred years since her making she was still sound and lovely. She had hung in Chartres, in Barcelona, even in Rome, before her gifting to the school had brought her to her place of honor in the tower. He had seen her there, and saw the words etched into her flanged edge. Her name was La Voix de l’Espoir, the Voice of Hope. Beneath her name there was an inscription in Latin, Hear me and do not despair.
She did not sound often; she was too old and precious for that, only on occasions of deep significance. They saved her to celebrate Easter and Christmas. To mourn the loss of the beloved dead. To commemorate moments of importance for the institution of St. Michael’s. Today was one such moment. Today a new priest was arriving to be installed as minister to the school, and that meant the holy bell would ring in honor of the beginning of the new day.
Gabriel had risen early to scale the rooftops this morning, but not the bell tower. He had chosen the steeple over the library instead. It was climbed so rarely that it was sure that no one would be there at this early hour. That was as Gabriel wanted it, somewhere out of the way, somewhere he’d be certain to be alone, within hearing distance of the bell. Of course, it was difficult to move out of hearing distance of this bell.
There was no wind that morning, and there was no place higher than the steeple to glide from, so Gabriel had to climb. He was thankful for how early it was, as no one was likely to see him do it. Braden didn’t like it when he scrambled up the walls like a squirrel when everyone was looking on. He also had to take care not to damage the stone façade; it would have been easier to just punch his talons in as he climbed, but he didn’t want to any more damage than he had to. Braden wouldn’t like that either.
It was only a few minutes to seven when he reached the balcony. It was empty except for a few folding chairs, left there by the occasional student who ascended all those stairs to find a quiet lonely place to study. From here you could see the whole campus, the rooftop of almost every other building of the school. Gabriel liked high places; for a brief while, they allowed him to forget what he was.
It was moments to seven. Carefully, deliberately, he leaned over the parapet and braced his claws on the stone. Head bowed, every cord of muscle in his body tensed, he waited.
The bell tolled, and Gabriel shuddered.
One.
He could not recall just how old he’d been the first time he’d heard it, such things did not keep easily in his head. But he’d been at Saint Michael’s as long as he could remember, surely it had happened since his infancy, some Christmas morning, some Easter day. It had to have come early enough that he learned early what was coming, and what that coming meant.
His whole body burst through with the pain.
Two.
The tolling of bells was a common occurrence at St. Michael's, with a number of small ringers in the tower pealing all day long to mark the passage of time. Every day of his life spent at the academy he had heard them call out hour by hour. At their sounding Gabriel had never felt so much as a twinge. But the keepers of the hours were ordinary secular chimes. La Voix was a bell of the church.
The sound sank into him, the deep resonance of a holy instrument, its sacred nature giving it a power beyond the simple enormity of its voice. Its tone was imbued with all the divine quality of any object bearing the auspice of the church-- beautiful, powerful, and utterly unbearable to the hearing of a demon.
Three.
His claws trembled against the parapet, aching to gouge into the stone, but instead he clenched them into fists, so tightly that his talons sank into the scales of his palms. Sometimes in church they rang special hand bells to mark the consecration of the bread and wine. From the rafters were he lurked during mass he had felt the swift punch of their high sharp voices, like the darting of knives in quick succession. Their blows pierced but were brief as they chimed out a few times and were silenced. Gabriel could endure them with no great struggle. But La Voix was huge, La Voix was resonant, and La Voix had received the Baptism.
It was the Baptism of the Bells that gave it that power. Washed with holy water by the hands of a bishop, anointed without by the oil of the infirm and within by the sacred chrism, filled by smoke of a fuming censor. With these sacraments, the bishop’s prayer conferred upon it the power to protect from storms, call the faithful to prayer, and drive demons to flight.
He would not fly. Nor would he howl; not a cry, not a sound. Only the jags of his ragged breath, and the bell.
Four.
Every peal seized him like a vice, yet twisted the joining of his bones until he thought he might be wrenched apart. He clamped one claw over the ridges of brow, as if to hold his skull together. His serpentine neck curled inward, tucking his head nearly to his chest. There were many things the apocrypha suggested about demons that posed no danger to Gabriel. He could hear mass, say prayers, and without fear enter into a church. Magdalena held it up as evidence that he was no monster beyond redemption. Others like Braden were unconvinced— the workings of Hell were of course not fully understood, and never would be. Besides, there were still so many things that branded him unholy. He was burned by the water in the font, he could enter the church but never stand upon the altar, and the pain that exploded in him at sound of the church bell.
Five.
His whole body curled inward on itself. His tail, usually snaking in constant movement, had twisted itself up in contortions. He went to great lengths to ensure he was always alone when the bell rung, because there was no way he could hide what it did to him.
Once it had happened in front of Magda, the night when Rodrigo Cortez had died. It had been some time in coming; he had elected to stop treatment and come back to his place at the school to meet the end. She had come to his room to speak to him, to tell him the end was near, to speak to him of how felt. But when La Voix rang out to tell the world the priest was dead, she saw for the first time the misery it beat into it him with every clang of its clapper.
He remembered the shock and horror on her face, then look of dawning realization as she understood, transforming swiftly into that horrible gut-wrenching pity that shamed him to his soul, to see her reminded yet again that this was his nature, to be ever wounded by holy things. She had darted for the door, given a burst of frantic energy in her upset, but he managed to throw himself in front of it and desperately shake his head, refusing to let her leave. He could not speak in his agony, but the meaning was clear, that she could not stop the bell, not without letting everyone know why. She had spent more than twenty years trying to make them believe he was not a monster beyond redemption. She could not reveal this without giving them one more to reason to denounce him for what he was. So she had stood there and watched, quietly sobbing behind her hands, unable even to comfort him for fear of his agonized thrashing. She could give out the means to tear him down, or she could let him suffer in silence. But she knew him well enough to know which pain he’d rather bear. And so he did, every time, bracing his battered body and counting the strokes.
Six.
His knees buckled and he collapsed onto all fours. He gasped helplessly through the tight locking of his teeth. He could not bear much more, his jaw would crack, his skull would split, his insides would twist apart. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be dying, if the pain was so great that it would actually kill him.
But then at last, there rang the final toll.
Seven.
He almost screamed. He almost writhed and thrashed and struck heedlessly at the stone. He could have torn the balcony to pieces in his pain. But he tensed his every muscle through the bell’s final peal and let it take one last blow through him.
The tremors stopped as the toll faded into silence.
He sank down against his forearms, pressing his snout into the floor. He held still a moment, his breath evening out, the deep permeating ache slowly melting from his bones. Unsteadily he stood and stretched, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his wings as wide as they could go. It was better this way, better to hide it. There would be no more speculation, no more constant sidelong glances wondering at the true depths of his monstrousness. He was debated and prodded and suspiciously regarded enough.
But it was more than only that. He did not want the bell silenced. This was penance. Penance for the thing that he was.
He blew out hard through his still-clenched teeth. He straightened slowly, releasing by inches the tension in his muscles. Unlike his burns and scars, this left no marks that anyone could see, nothing that remained after the ordeal was ended. The pain had disappeared, gone as completely as if it had never been. There was only that strange lingering weakness, soul-deep, that hung in his limbs like a weight before it too faded into nothingness.
Gabriel stepped out onto the ledge of the balcony and spread his wings to catch the wind. Seven in the morning on the day the new priest was to arrive. There was no sense in him remaining up in the library steeple any longer. It was time for church.
He sprang powerfully off the ledge, as lithe as strong as ever, as if the agony of the last few moments had never happened, as if the bell had never rung except for only the clear, true sound echoing in his thoughts.
God, that bell was beautiful.
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