But she had read the Ten Commandments in the last two months, although she’d had little time for reading even the Bible.
She said, “Go on, Brother. Quote the next verse.”
Whatever riposte he expected, it wasn’t that. His eyes narrowed to slits as he quoted, “‘Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord—’”
“Yes!” Mary cut in. “‘Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them.’ That passage is about idols. That’s what it meant by graven images. Those drawings aren’t idols to be worshiped. They’re only Rachel’s way of understanding what she saw, of making a record of it.”
The Doctor surged to his feet, loomed monolithically above her. “You’re twisting words, Sister! The Bible says thou shalt not make any likeness of any thing—”
“To bow down to! To worship! You can’t interpret that passage—”
“Interpret?” The whip crack was in his voice again. “You can’t interpret the truth!”
But she wasn’t brought to heel. “Tell me what Christ’s last words were!”
That stopped him; he couldn’t seem to make sense of it, and Mary rushed into the gap. “In the four gospels, there are three different versions of Jesus’ dying words. Don’t tell me finding the truth in that doesn’t take some interpretation. Truth is not a simple thing!”
At that moment Luke nodded anxiously and said, “Yes, Brother, that’s a truth. Rachel said that, I remember.”
The Doctor glared at Luke as if he’d struck him, and Mary rode a surge of gratitude for Luke’s simple affirmation, but she was too caught up in what she read in the Doctor’s face to respond to it.
Now she understood. The Doctor’s motivation for his attack on Rachel was manifest in his face, in the flush of rage underlain by stark fear. The combined assault left him speechless.
Mary asked, “Luke, did you tell him Rachel might come here to live?”
Luke seemed in the throes of realization of his unintentional act of defiance. He scowled absently, then nodded. “Yes, of course.”
Now she understood. The Doctor had been for all these years, through pestilence and starvation and terror, the sole arbiter of truth at the Ark. That was the source of his power. Then Luke had gone out into the ravaged world and found another potential arbiter whose interpretation of truth was at odds with the Doctor’s.
Luke would never think of Rachel in those terms, yet she had obviously influenced him, the Doctor’s only living relative, his heir apparent, and if she could influence Luke…
The Doctor turned on Mary, and he was totally the prophet now, larger than life in his overpowering wrath. “You’re venturing dangerously close to blasphemy, Sister!”
“Blasphemy!” The shark of anger lashed to the surface. “Because I know you’re afraid of Rachel? You’re afraid the Flock might listen to her, afraid they might find out your idea of truth isn’t the only one!”
Luke pleaded, “Mary, please!”
“God is the truth,” the Doctor crowed, “and you will answer to Him on the Day of Judgment that draws nearer—”
“But I won’t answer to you!” She rose, still forced to look up at him, but at a smaller angle. “Haven’t I proved myself here? Haven’t I worked as hard as any other member of the Flock? Have I ever done anything that anyone could take exception to? No! Not until tonight, until you showed me something you had stolen from me—”
“Silence, Sister! It is not your place to question me, and if you persist in questioning the truth, you will no longer be welcome at the Ark among the righteous!”
“Then maybe I should go back to the woman Rachel and raise my child at Amarna!”
And suddenly panic snared her. It was a hollow threat, and if she hadn’t given in to her anger and the heady pleasure of unleashing it, she’d never have made it.
Raise her child at Amarna? She was here because she had recognized the futility, even cruelty, of raising a child to live and die in sterile solitude. And the threat rang even more brazenly hollow when she reminded herself that she wasn’t even sure there was a child.
Luke came to his feet, took a step toward her, indecision and hope struggling in his eyes. “Mary… are you…”
But her attention was fixed apprehensively on the Doctor. She saw a flash of hope break through the angry skepticism like a shaft of sunlight through an iron gray overcast, but it was gone in a moment, leaving nothing but hostile doubt.
“Your child? Are you saying you’re pregnant?” He reached out, gripped her arm with bruising force. “Are you sure?”
Mary winced, and she couldn’t stop her trembling. “I’m sure I’ve missed three periods.”
“But it could be a false pregnancy.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“You don’t think I can test your claim now, do you?”
“I don’t know or care—”
“Well, you’re wrong!” And he grabbed the lamp from the mantel and strode toward the examination-room door, dragging her with him. “Come on, Sister. We’ll find out if you’re pregnant!”
Mary balked, but the last of her anger succumbed to fear when he exerted himself—and it seemed such a small exertion—to pull her into the examination room and slam the door. There, he released her, turned his back on her while he lighted a smaller oil lamp with a round, mirrored reflector. Then he filled a basin with water from a covered pail and began soaping his hands. “Take off your clothes, Sister.”
She gazed numbly around the room: enameled cabinets, shelves of bottles and boxes, some marked with brand names from Before, and in the center of the room, the narrow, sheet-draped table with the metal stirrups at one end. The smell of alcohol was sharp in the chill air; the steel speculum glittered on a tray by the basin.
“Sister, I said take off your clothes. For the Lord’s sake, I’m a doctor. Or is there some reason you don’t want me to examine you?”
She could think of many reasons, but she crossed to the chair in one corner and began undressing. In the days Before, a nurse would have provided one of those silly paper smocks to maintain the illusions of modesty, but the Doctor was too impatient to offer a substitute.
“Get on the table.”
And too impatient to offer a helping hand or notice that she was shivering with the cold.
“Lie back.”
She had never felt so vulnerable in nakedness. She clenched her teeth when she felt his fingers pressing into her lower abdomen. A physician’s touch had always seemed quite impersonal to her, but this seemed an invasion. And now he was feeling her breasts. She closed her eyes, trying not to flinch. Then she heard him move to the end of the table.
“Slide down this way.” Two metallic clicks. “Farther. Yes. Feet in the stirrups.” He guided her heels into the stirrups and pushed her knees apart, and she caught her breath, hands locked on the edges of the table. He put the lamp with the reflector in a mount that had undoubtedly been designed for an electric light. She could feel the warmth on the insides of her thighs. She waited, bracing herself for what had to be done, staring up at the grotesque shadow he made on the plank ceiling. The sudden insertion of the icy speculum shocked her into a cry.
“Be still, woman,” he snapped. “Keep your legs apart.”
She disciplined her body to stillness while the speculum penetrated slowly, expanding with small ratcheting sounds, and discomfort edged toward pain. Why was he so damnably slow about it? She raised her head, saw him bending between the silhouetted angle of her thighs, saw his face behind the lamp’s glare. “Some women like this,” he said contemptuously.