“Get away from me!” He lashed out, his hand striking the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. She tasted the earth on her lips, heard Yorick barking, as the Doctor pronounced, “I have given my judgment!”
And there was no appeal.
Someone was helping her to her feet. She got her balance, looked around at him, at Luke, and while his eyes brimmed with baffled love, she waited, panting with rage, until he retreated from her.
And the Doctor stood like a figure carved in stone, and she knew that if she beat on him with her fists—and that was her impulse—she would only bloody her hands. At this moment she recognized something about him that she had always known but found expedient to ignore. This man was insane. He survived because these frightened survivors of the ultimate holocaust sustained his delusions as his delusions sustained theirs. A closed loop of insanity. That was the way the world ended, not with a bang nor a whimper, but with a meaningless paroxysm of madness.
Mary spoke into the pendant silence, spoke loud enough for everyone in the Flock to hear. “He has given his judgment. And Jesus said, ‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’ Look at him! He’s afraid!”
“Be quiet, Sister!” He balled his hands into fists, his face livid with frustrated anger.
But she only raised her voice. “Wasn’t Jesus the lord of mercy, who took in anyone who asked for help?”
“Damn you, I said—”
“But this man has condemned a woman all of you would call a saint if you knew her. He is afraid of Rachel because Luke called her a woman of wisdom, and he—”
“To the church!” His face nearly purple now, he flung out his arms, pivoted toward the Flock. “All of you—go to the church!”
Perhaps that’s what they’d been waiting for: a direct order. They knew how to deal with that. Mary stood silent as one by one they began walking up the road toward the Ark. There was Nehemiah, shuffling along like a man of ninety. And Adam, looking back at her in bewilderment. Enid, Hannah, Naomi, Leah, Esther, and the other women who had dressed her for her wedding. And Bernadette, who had provided her bouquet of wild asters and pearly everlasting.
Mary turned her back on them and went to Rachel, again reached for her hand, seeking its strength, finding only heartbreaking fragility. And there was nothing she could say. The language of this despair was unknown to her.
“Luke’s right,” Rachel said softly. “I shouldn’t have come here. It was a faint hope at best, and I knew it when I left Amarna. I’ll go now.”
Mary nodded. “You won’t go alone.” She looked around for Yorick, found him pacing anxiously beside her, then she took Epona’s reins and started toward the gate.
“Sister Mary!”
She turned, saw the Doctor and Luke standing where she had left them, while behind them the Flock paused in their retreat.
The Doctor said, “Sister Mary, you will not go with that daughter of Satan. Come here!”
“Brother, I will go with her.”
He took a step forward, pale eyes stark in his reddened face. “You carry our child! You can’t leave the Ark!”
The despair fed the new rage that pounded with her pulse in her head. She shouted, “This is not your child and never will be!”
Luke cried, “No! Mary, you can’t—”
“Brother Luke,” the Doctor cut in, “control your wife. Bring her to the church!”
Luke looked at him, hesitated, then started toward Mary. “I can’t let you go, Mary. You’ll have to come with me.”
Mary didn’t answer that. She reached for the rifle behind Rachel’s saddle, jerked it out of its sheath, snapped off the safety, and looked down the gleaming barrel into Luke’s stunned face.
He seemed to freeze, and in his eyes she read elemental fear. A sudden calm possessed her. The shaking of her taut muscles abated, she felt the stock smooth against her cheek, the trigger waiting under her finger. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life.
Luke pleaded, “Mary… please, Mary…”
“Why?” She didn’t recognize her own voice, it was so guttural and cold. “Why should I show you any mercy? You want to live by the Doctor’s rules, by the old Mosaic code? This is part of it—along with slavery, polygamy, and animal sacrifice. An eye for an eye, Luke!”
“But, Mary… I love you!”
Her hands flexed on the rifle, and she heard a voice—Rachel’s voice—pleading with her not to kill, not to kill Luke, but the voice barely reached her consciousness. She stood with her finger tight on the trigger and laughed until she knew she was on the brink of tears, and she became acutely aware of herself, of Luke, of Rachel, of the Doctor, of the Flock waiting and paralyzed with fear. She saw the entire tableau as if she were outside it, no longer a part of it.
Eye for eye. Life for life.
But it didn’t work and never had in the thousands of years since that philosophy was invented. She despised it as she did the Doctor’s arrogance, as she did Luke’s cowardice, yet she had nearly succumbed to it, just as she had years ago. Why was it so sweet in its promise of satisfaction, that ancient philosophy of revenge? As sweet as ignorance that wraps its nakedness in the shining trappings of faith.
Mary didn’t lower the gun. She didn’t move. “Luke, I won’t kill you for the sake of revenge, but neither will I go back to the Ark. If you try to take me by force, I will kill you. So, go on, Luke. Go to the church with your prophet. And wait for the day of judgment.”
In the silence that followed, she could hear the distant bleating of goats, the soft clangor of cowbells, the murmuring of the Jordan in the cool shadows of firs. None of the human occupants of this pleasant landscape moved or made a sound until finally the Doctor shouted, “Let her go! Let her go with her witch sister!”
But Luke stood gazing at Mary, his eyes flooded with tears. “Mary, you can’t take our child. You can’t… leave me….”
She tried to remember why she had loved him and found no answer within her.
“Luke, if you love me—” Her mouth seemed to balk at the words.
“Oh, Mary, of course, I do. You know I—”
“If you love me, you’ll bring me some food, blankets, bandages, and any medication that might help Rachel.”
His mouth sagged open, and he glanced over his shoulder. The Doctor like a good shepherd watched this wayward lamb to see that it didn’t stray too far. The rest of his Flock waited.
Luke gasped, “Mary, I can’t do that. The Doctor wouldn’t—Mary, you have to understand. He’s held us together through all these years of tribulation. He is the Ark. And the Ark is our only hope!”
“Then you have no hope.” She lowered the rifle, caught the glint of gold on her left hand, and slipped the ring off her finger, tossed it at Luke’s feet. He stared down at it, but made no move to pick it up.
She turned and looked up at Rachel, but neither of them spoke. Mary whistled for Yorick and led Epona out the gate. When she closed it, Luke was still standing there, watching her. She looked past him, past the Doctor, past the Flock, to the Ark.
Now she understood why it was built as a fortress.
She took Epona’s reins and started down the road, and it was only then that she realized she hadn’t once in the six months since she entered this gate set foot outside it.
She pressed a hand to her body, waited for some movement there, but felt nothing.
Why had she brought Rachel here?
Mary only asked herself that question after she had a fire burning and two of the pots from the nesting camp set steaming on the grate, one filled with water, the other with the meat of the rabbit she had shot at the side of the road.