Temperatures rose for three days, followed by a cold spring rain. The season was welcome, the mud and wind were not. Even the fur snakes had grown moody and gaunt, foraging in the muck for last year’s ground cover. One of the animals had gone blind in one eye, a cataract that turned the pupil gauzy and pale.
Fresh storms came towering from the west. Tom Compton scouted out a rockfall that provided some natural shelter, a granite crawl space open on two sides. The floor was sand, littered with animal droppings. Guilford blocked up both entrances with sticks and furs and tethered the snakes outside to act as an alarm. But if the little cavern had once been occupied, its tenant showed no sign of returning.
A torrent of cold rain locked them into the sheltered space. Tom hollowed out a fire pit under the stones’ natural chimney. He had taken to humming ridiculous, sentimental old Mauve Decade tunes — “Golden Slippers,” “Marbl’d Halls,” and such. No lyrics, just raw basso melodies. The effect was less like song and more like an aboriginal chant, mournful and strange.
The rain storm rattled on, easing periodically but never stopping. Runnels of water coursed down the stone. Guilford scratched out a trench to conduct moisture to the lower opening of the cave. They began to ration their food. Everyday we stay here, Guilford thought, we’re a little weaker; every day the Rhine is a little more distant. He supposed there was some neat equation, some equivalency of pain and time, not working in their favor.
He dreamed less often of the Army picket, though the picket was still a regular fixture of his nights, concerned, imploring, and unwelcome. He dreamed of his father, whose doggedness and sense of order had conducted him to an early grave.
No judgment implied, Guilford thought. What brings a man to this desolate tag-end of the Earth, if not a ferocious single-mindedness?
Maybe the same single-mindedness would carry him back to Caroline and Lily.
You cannot die, Sullivan had said. Perhaps not. He had been lucky. But he could certainly force his body beyond all tolerable limits.
He turned to face Tom, who sat with his spine against the cold rock, knees drawn. His hand groped periodically for the pipe he had lost months ago. “In the city,” Guilford said, “did you dream?”
The frontiersman’s response was glacial. “You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Dreams are nothing. Dreams are shit.”
“Even so.”
“Dreamed one dream,” Tom said. “Dreamed I died in some field of mud. Dreamed I was a soldier.” He hesitated. “Dreamed I was my own ghost, if that makes any sense.”
Too much sense, Guilford thought.
Well, not sense, exactly, but it implied… dear God, what?
He shivered and turned away.
“We need food,” Tom said. “I’ll hunt tomorrow if the weather allows.” He gazed at Preston Finch, sleeping like a corpse, the skin of his face tattooed against his skull. “If I can’t hunt, we’ll have to slaughter one of the snakes.”
“We’d be cutting our own throat.”
“We can reach the Rhine with two snakes.”
For once, he didn’t sound confident.
Morning was clear but very cold. “Stoke the fire,” the frontiersman told Guilford. “Don’t let it go out. If I’m not back in three days, head north without me. Do what you can for Finch.”
Guilford watched him amble into the raw blue light of the day, his rifle slung on his shoulder, his motion cadenced, conserving his energy. The fur snakes turned their wide black eyes on him and mewed.
“I never wanted this,” Finch said.
The fire had burned low. Guilford crouched over it, feeding damp twigs into huddled flame. The moisture burned off quickly, more steam than smoke. “What’s that, Dr. Finch?”
Finch stood up, stepped cautiously out of the cave and into the frigid daylight, fragile as old paper. Guilford kept an eye on him. Last night he had been raving in his sleep.
But Finch only stood against a rock, loosened his fly, and urinated at length.
He hobbled back, still talking. “Never wanted this, Mr. Law. I wanted a sane world, d’you understand that?”
Finch was hard to understand in general, when he spoke at all. Two of his front teeth had loosened; he whistled like a kettle. Guilford nodded abstractedly as he fed the fire.
“Don’t patronize me. Listen. It made sense, Mr. Law, the Conversion of Europe, it made sense in the context of the Biblical Flood, Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah, and if it was not the act of a jealous but comprehensible God then it could only be chaos, horror.”
“Maybe it only looks that way because we’re ignorant,” Guilford said. “Maybe we’re like monkeys staring in a mirror. There’s a monkey in the mirror, but no monkey behind the mirror. Does that make it a miracle, Dr. Finch?”
“You didn’t see that man’s body give up its wounds.”
“Dr. Sullivan once said ‘miracle’ is a name we give our ignorance.”
“Only one of the names. There are others.”
“Oh?”
“Spirits. Demons.”
“Superstition,” Guilford said, though his hackles rose.
“Superstition,” Finch said tonelessly, “is what we call the miracles we don’t approve of.”
Not much paper left, nor ink. I’ll be brief (Except to say I miss you, Caroline, and have not abandoned hope of seeing you again, holding you in my arms.)
Tom Compton gone now four days, one past his limit. I should move on, but it will be difficult without his help. I still hope to see his hairy shape come ambling our of the forest.
Dr. Finch is dead, Caroline. When I woke up he was not in the shelter. I stepped out into the crisp morning to discover he had hanged himself with our rope from the branch of a sage-pine tree.
Last night’s rain had frozen to him, Caroline, and his body glistened like a perverse Christmas ornament in the sunlight. I shall cut him down when I feel stronger, make this little stone cavern his monument grave.
Poor Dr. Finch. He was tired, and sick, and I suspect he didn’t want to go on living in what he came to believe is a demon-haunted world. And maybe there is some wisdom in that.
But I shall carry on. My love to you Lily.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The plush lobby of the Empire Hotel was abandoned. The residents had gathered at the crown of the street to watch the shelling. Caroline passed by the red-velvet furniture and hurried up the stairs with Colin and Lily behind her.
Colin unlocked the door of his room. Lily was at the window instantly, craning to see the battle past the wall of a warehouse. Lily had been grateful to leave Mrs. de Koenig: she wanted to see what was happening, too.
“Fireworks,” Lily said solemnly.
“Not really, darling. This is something bad.”
“And loud,” Lily reported.
“Very loud.” Are we safe here? Caroline wondered. Was there somewhere else to go?
Artillery fire rattled the walls. American artillery, Caroline thought. What did that mean? It meant, she supposed, that she was an enemy national in a country at war. And that might be the least of her worries. The docks were ablaze, she saw as she pulled Lily away from the window — and the shipyards, the customs house, probably Jered’s warehouse full of munitions. The wind was gentle but persistent, and from the east, and something was already burning at the far end of Candlewick Street.