Ten years ago, Joan had been snatched from Thomas Covenant’s care by a group of people who were-in the county’s eyes-demonstrably insane. For weeks these individuals had nurtured their lunacy and destitution openly, begging for food and shelter and clothing, calling for repentance. Then, one night little more than twenty-four hours after Linden had arrived in town to accept a job at County Hospital, they had kidnapped Joan, leaving Covenant himself unconscious, his home splashed with blood.
They had taken her into the woods behind his home, where they had apparently planned to kill her in some bizarre ritual-a rite which included burning their own hands to stumps in a bonfire built for the purpose. Although no one except Linden knew the truth, that rite had achieved its intended aim. It had lured Covenant into the woods on Joan’s trail. There he had exchanged himself for her, and been killed.
In the life which Linden had lived here, she had known him for scarcely thirty-six hours.
After his death, however, the people who had arranged his self-sacrifice had regained some measure of ordinary sanity. Their charred hands and starved bodies had been horrible enough. Those injuries had stretched County Hospital’s limits. But the burden of their damaged minds, their aggrieved spirits, had proved harder for the citizens of the area to bear. Collectively the county felt responsible.
In public, most people admitted that they had failed to care for the most desolate and fragile members of their community. Surely unbalanced mothers and fathers would not have thrust, not just their own hands, but the hands of their children as well into the flames if their destitution had not been neglected by the more stable souls around them? Surely those wounded men and women would have eschewed such violence if they had been offered any other recourse? No matter how many demented preachers urged them to fanaticism? Listening to children in cruel pain sob through the night taught the well-meaning people of the county to desire some form of prevention.
Yet this sense of communal guilt ran deeper than most people would acknowledge. On some level, the entire county understood that the terrible events leading to Covenant’s murder would never have happened if he had not been shunned and execrated, forced into the traditional role of the outcast, the pariah. He had been, inexplicably, a leper: he had what the doctors called a “primary” case of Hansen’s disease, one with no known etiology. Such cases were rare, even by the standards of an illness as rare as leprosy, but they occurred often enough to suggest the wrath of God; punishment for sins so vile that they sickened the sinner.
Viscerally frightened and full of loathing, people had spurned Thomas Covenant as if he were a carrier of corruption. For over a decade, he had occupied Haven Farm on sufferance: seeing no one, never coming to town, avoided by his neighbours; occasionally harassed by the county sheriff, Barton Lytton; uncomfortably tolerated by his own lawyer, Megan Roman; befriended only by Julius Berenford, then chief of staff at County Hospital. Indeed, the county’s repugnance for Covenant’s illness would have driven him into exile if he had not once saved the life of a snake-bitten girl. In addition, however, he made significant contributions to the care of the county’s indigents-money which he earned by writing novels about guilt and power. In effect, he had supported the very people who brought about his death: the same people, presumably, who had driven his ex-wife mad. Therefore he was tolerated.
Then he was gone, irretrievable, leaving only Joan and Linden behind.
Dr. Berenford believed that he had been too silent while Covenant lived. Afterward he raised his voice. Impelled by her own regrets, Megan Roman acted on his words. And the voters and politicians of the county felt more responsible than they cared to admit. They lobbied the state legislature: they passed mill levies: they applied for grants.
Eventually they built Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, named for Julius when he had slipped away in his sleep one night five years ago. And they appointed Linden as Berenford Memorial’s CMO. She was the only one among them who had accompanied Covenant to his last crisis.
Now she presided over a small facility of twenty beds, all in private rooms. Her staff included five nurses, five orderlies, one janitor, one maintenance man, and a coterie of part-time secretaries, in addition to volunteers like Maxine Dubroff. Berenford Memorial had two psychiatrists on call. And one physician-herself- with a background in emergency-room medicine and family practice: trauma, triage, and pink eye.
From the lobby, she guided Covenant’s son upstairs to the “acute care” wing: ten beds devoted to patients who were inclined to injure themselves, assault the staff, or run away at random opportunities. Instead of proceeding to loan’s room, however, she paused at the top of the stairs and turned to face Roger.
“A moment, if you don’t mind, Mr. Covenant. May I ask you a question?” When he had seen his mother, he might not give her another chance. “The more I think about it, the less I understand why you’re here.”
Again his smile seemed merely reflexive. “What is there to understand? She’s my mother. Why wouldn’t I want to see her?”
“Of course,” Linden countered. “But what inspired your desire to take care of her? That’s not as common as you might think. Frankly, it sounds a little”- the term she wished to use was de trop, existentially dislocated- “daunting.”
In response, Roger’s manner seemed to sharpen. “The last time I saw her,” he replied precisely, “she told me that if she failed I would need to take her place. Until yesterday I didn’t have the resources to do that.”
Involuntarily Linden caught her breath as the bottom of her stomach seemed to fall away. “Failed at what?”
Long ago, Joan had sought out Thomas Covenant-no, not sought out, she had been sent- in order to teach him despair. Despite her terrible plight, however, and her thirst for his blood, she had failed absolutely.
“Isn’t that obvious?” Covenant’s son returned. “She’s here, isn’t she? Wouldn’t you call that failure?”
No. For a moment, Linden’s heart quailed. Memories beat about her head like wings: she felt harried by furies.
Her face must have betrayed her chagrin. Solicitously, Roger reached out to touch her arm. “Dr. Avery, are you all right?” Then he dropped his hand. “I really think you should let me take her. It would be better for everyone.”
Even you, he seemed to say. Especially you.
Take her place.
Ten years ago, empowered by all of those hands thrust into the flames, all of that ceded pain, as well as by the fatal rush of Thomas Covenant’s blood, a bitter malevolence had pierced the reality of Linden’s life. It had drawn her in Covenant’s wake to another place, another dimension of existence. The psychiatrists on call at Berenford Memorial would have called it a “psychotic episode”- an extended psychotic episode. With Covenant, she had been summoned to a realm known as the Land, where she had been immersed in evil until she was altered almost beyond recognition. During the black hours of that one night, before Julius Berenford had found her with Covenant’s body, she had somehow spent several months outside-or deep within-herself, striving to win free of her own weakness and the legacy of her parents in order to preserve the beauty of a world which had never been meant for corruption.
Now Roger’s words seemed to suggest that she would have to face it all again.