And I remember that winter, a mild winter of gentle rains and few storms. I wasn’t clairvoyant. I didn’t even see the present clearly.
“Yes, I was happy. Luke was proud and loving, and everything seemed good. I was so consumed with my child, I didn’t think past its birth. I was full of energy and self-satisfaction, and I couldn’t imagine anything that would unravel the golden skein of my world.”
He hesitates, his night-dark eyes hooded. “But something did… unravel it?”
“It didn’t so much unravel, really, as disintegrate.” I watch a solitary gull soaring low over the breakers. “That was late in February. I was seven months pregnant then. I always think of February as the real beginning of spring. The smell in the air is different, and the first daffodils are blooming….”
But that year it wasn’t a beginning.
Chapter 24
The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing.
If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent.
Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?
The Jordan ran high with the first spring runoff, and even from the north garden, Mary could hear its murmur. To the east, the orchard was on the fine verge of exploding into bloom. Just outside the garden fence, a black Nubian doe, shadowed by her new kid, browsed in the green grass growing up through last year’s rain-beaten straw. Mary leaned on her hoe and arched her back against the dull ache at the base of her spine. She watched the kid maneuvering on wobbly legs, bleating adamantly when the doe moved too far away, and she pressed her hand to the swelling curve of her belly, thinking to the child there: Only two more months, and you’ll be free.
She often spoke to the child that way, and sometimes forgot and spoke aloud. The people who heard her laughed and asked, “Has it begun to talk back to you, Sister?”
In its way, it did. She felt it moving at times and was always awed by the sensation, savoring the private joy of knowing that however commonplace it might be in the grand scheme of things, she harbored a miracle.
“Sister Mary, aren’t you getting too tired?”
Mary looked around at Naomi, one of the Barrens, who had also paused to lean on her hoe. The garden was full of people taking advantage of the sunny day to prepare the soil for planting. The raised beds in this garden couldn’t be plowed, and in each of the long beds two men spaded kelp, ground eggshells, and manure into the earth, while two women followed with hoes to break the clods, then two more with rakes to smooth the nourished soil.
Mary shook her head. “No, I’m not tired.”
Naomi sighed. “You really shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.”
“Yes, I should, Sister Naomi.” Mary began cutting into the dark clods with her hoe; the fecund smell of the earth was pleasantly sour.
Another sigh from Naomi, but she didn’t argue. All the women had argued with Mary too often, too fruitlessly. They wanted her to do nothing but rest, and she understood their concern. They had seen too many of the few women who became pregnant lose their babies. But she would not become an invalid, would not sit placidly while her muscles turned flaccid. Her hope was in her good health and strength, and she didn’t intend to forfeit them to fear.
Two months. After the baby was bom was time enough to sit and rest. No. Time to indulge herself in the pleasure of nurturing the child. She thought of it as a friend as well as a miracle.
And as soon as possible after the child was born she and Luke and the baby would go to Amarna. Luke had promised he’d talk to the Doctor about the trip, about Rachel. Mary would have to remind him again. She cleaved the lumps of dirt, feeling the rhythmic impacts through the hoe. Luke was so hesitant, almost timid, when it came to the Doctor, yet these last four months, the Doctor had been unfailingly solicitous and full of good humor.
“Mary, would you like some water?”
She looked up to see Bernadette offering a canteen. Mary took it and tipped it up to let the cool water wash down her throat, then returned it with her thanks.
Bernadette nodded absently. “Where’s Luke today?”
“He’s in the west field helping with the plowing.”
Bernadette looked toward the dust clouds rising behind the two teams of horses. Then she glanced up at the sky. “Getting on toward evening. I gathered some fern fiddleheads for supper. You need the vitamin C. Did you drink some extra milk this afternoon?”
Mary smiled at her stem expression. “Yes, I did. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For your concern.”
She responded testily, “It’s my job, looking after you and Sister Hannah.” Then her eyes narrowed; she raised a hand to shade her eyes as she stared westward. “God in heaven, what is that?”
Mary turned, and at first she saw nothing unusual, until a movement fixed her attention on the road where it emerged from the forest.
A rider on a dark horse, a bay nearly black in the shadows of the trees, moving at an unhurried walk toward the main gate. A dog trotted ahead of the horse.
“A stranger!”
The words ricocheted around her with cries of surprise and alarm, and people began moving toward the garden’s west gate. Mary dropped her hoe and joined them.
A stranger.
It was a staggering event here, and she felt her heart pounding. From the south garden, from the west fields, she heard shouts and questions, and near her someone cried, “It must be the Lord!”
The rider had reached the gate on the road and stopped.
The lord? Mary laughed. Would Jesus come on horseback with full packs behind the saddle and the barrel of a rifle clearly visible? Would Jesus be so small, bent over in the saddle like a tired child? Would Jesus be led by a black dog with white paws and…
Yorick.
And the horse—it was Epona. Of course, it was.
Mary pushed her way through the small crowd at the garden gate.
The rider—the stranger—was Rachel.
Someone tried to hold her back. Bernadette. Mary pulled away from her, laughing, shouting, “It’s Rachel! Go find Luke—tell him it’s Rachel!” And she broke away and ran toward the main gate.
Rachel had come to the Ark, and Mary didn’t stop to wonder why. She ran through the tangles of winter grass underlain with spring green, and the pent loneliness burst loose within her, and she wondered how she had borne it.
But now Rachel was here—she was here at the Ark.
When Mary was still fifty feet from the gate, Yorick wriggled under it and scuttled to meet her. She scooped him up, whirled around while he licked at her face ecstatically, then she put him down, and together they ran to the gate, where Epona stretched her neck over the top wire, soft lips pushed out in a nicker of greeting.