“But it was the other way around,” he objects.
“Was it, Stephen?”
He tilts his head, his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed. And at that moment Shadow comes bounding across the sand and greets him as if she’d been away on a long journey, and he laughs and ruffles her fur. I say no more about the image of god. Let him think about it awhile.
When Shadow settles herself at his feet, Stephen looks up at me and says, “I wish I could remember more about the Ark.”
“You were only three when you left it. Do you remember anything at all?”
“Only a room with log walls and a big fireplace. It must’ve been the kitchen of our household. And I think I remember Brother Luke. He had a long beard. It was nearly white.”
I’m trying to picture a white-bearded Luke when Stephen asks, “What else happened that fall?”
“Other than the long days of work, the hours spent listening to the Doctor’s sermons—well, there wasn’t time for much else.”
Except for making love. It was my salvation then. Night after night Luke and I coupled joyously in the encumbered warmth of that bed. I might exhaust myself physically with the day’s work, but I was never too spent to prove myself against his body. There were nights when he was absent from our bed on visitations—by decree of the Doctor, who kept a record of every woman’s menstrual cycles and calculated her days of maximum fertility. I didn’t begrudge those nights, nor did I feel any jealousy, only a piercing loneliness as I lay waiting for sleep.
Stephen rouses me with, “Do you remember Jeremiah when he was a baby?”
“Yes, I do. At that time Luke had fathered two children. One was Peter, who was born while Luke was away on his trek, and the other was Jeremiah. He was about fourteen months old. He had Luke’s blue eyes, and I hoped our child would be as fortunate.”
“Your child?”
“By late October I was fairly sure I was pregnant. The Doctor hadn’t included me in his record keeping—maybe he was giving Luke and me a grace period to conceive a child without his advice—and I didn’t tell the Doctor or even Luke that I thought I might be pregnant.
Stephen straddles the log, facing me. “Why not?”
“I didn’t know much about pregnancy, but I’d heard of false pregnancies. Sometimes women have all the symptoms of pregnancy—and I think I had most of them, including some of the more unpleasant ones—but there’s no baby. I just wasn’t sure. I was afraid I might not really be pregnant, and basically I was afraid I might not be capable of pregnancy. Yet it was odd… I was so intensely happy then. It was as if the hope was enough. It was my secret, and I thought when I was certain—well, I imagined how surprised and happy Luke would be, how the Doctor and the Flock would take me into their hearts.”
Stephen hesitates, finally asks, “When did you find out?”
“In November. The fifth day of November, in fact.” I lean down, run my fingers through Shadow’s silky fur. “For about two weeks before that, Luke had met privately with the Doctor a number of times after evening services, but he wouldn’t tell me what they talked about at those meetings. I just assumed it was Ark business, men’s business, and no concern of mine. And I… I loved Luke too much to doubt him.”
I straighten and look out at the slow cataracts of the breakers. “Sixty-six days. I don’t know why I remember that number so well. I’d been at the Ark for sixty-six days, and in that time I hadn’t read or even seen a book except the Bible or a hymnal. I hadn’t thought about anything except Luke and proving myself. And my child. I’d already privately named it Luke. Or Rachel, if it was a girl. Yes, I thought about Rachel, but only when I was alone, and that was rare. And when I did think about her, it was to count the months until spring, when Luke had promised we could go back to Amama to visit her.”
I turn to face Stephen, and he asks, almost whispering, “What happened on November fifth?”
“I learned the truth, Stephen. More of it than I wanted to know. After evening service that night, the Doctor asked Luke and me to come to his room. Just for a little talk, he said. Yet my first reaction was fear, and that surprised me. I mean, I should’ve been flattered to be granted an audience with the Doctor.”
Fear, I learned too late, was the truer response.
Chapter 22
It is piously spoken that the Scriptures cannot lie. But none will deny that they are frequently abstruse and their true meaning is difficult to discover, and more than the bare words signify.
Mary had never seen the Doctor’s sanctum sanctorum. She had, more than once, been detailed to clean the adjoining examination room, but the door to the Doctor’s room had always been closed.
Tonight they entered by the other door, the one in the church to the right of the altar. The Doctor, carrying a three-branched candelabra, led the way into a small room with a low, plank ceiling. He crossed to the fireplace on the opposite wall and put the candelabra on the mantel. “We’ll need a fire. Getting a bit cold at night, especially with this rain.”
Luke went to the wood box. “I’ll take care of the fire, Brother.”
Mary stood uncertainly just inside the door, while Luke worked at starting a fire, and the Doctor at lighting an oil lamp. The rain sizzled against the window on the wall to her right. She drew her wool shawl up over her shoulders and looked around the room, feeling oddly like a voyeur. Yet there was little to see. Across the room, next to the fireplace, was the door that opened into the examination room. On the left wall was a narrow bed, and at its foot, a wooden chest; on the wall backed to the church, a small table. No doubt the Doctor took his meals there, the meals the women daily left in the church like offerings. There were two straight chairs flanking the table, and in front of the fireplace, a wooden rocker.
“Ah, that’s wonderful, Luke.” That was for the fire as it began to flare. The Doctor put the lamp on the mantel, blew out the candles, then sat down in the rocker. “Sister Mary, pull up a chair to the fire.”
She brought a chair from the table and seated herself on his right, then rubbed her stocking-clad calves. It had been a long, warm Indian summer, and her body didn’t seem ready for the cold yet. But she sat up and folded her hands in her lap at the Doctor’s cool stare. No doubt he found it unseemly for her thus to call attention to her legs. Or, as he would say, with Victorian primness, her limbs. She watched the shadowed curve of Luke’s back as he added another wedge of alder to the fire. Then he rose, brought up the other chair, and sat on the Doctor’s left, and a silence took shape, augmented by the sputtering fire, the hissing rain on the windows, the creak of the Doctor’s chair as he rocked gently.
“I asked you to come here tonight because there’s something I must talk to both of you about. Particularly you, Sister Mary.”
Mary glanced at Luke, but his gaze was fixed on the floor at the Doctor’s feet. What would the Doctor want to talk about particularly with her? Had he guessed she was—might be—pregnant?
He said, “I’ve been talking to Luke lately about his travels, especially about the woman Rachel.”
Mary stared at him. Those words were stunning not only because they were totally unexpected, but because there was something ominous in the way he said the woman Rachel. Mary looked again at Luke, but he was still staring at the floor. She faced the Doctor, waiting for him to go on.
“Sister Mary, tell me about… Rachel.”