Grace could think of nothing to say. Mr. Veilleur was silent.
Brother Robert turned to Grace. "Do we accept that the Antichrist dwells within your niece?"
Grace turned away. She did not want to accept that, but it explained so much. It explained her own reaction that night a month ago when Carol and Jim visited. Carol must have been pregnant then, and Grace must have sensed the Evil One within her. And later that very night she had unconsciously turned a sacred hymn into blasphemy.
Silently she nodded. Martin, too, nodded. Mr. Veilleur sat motionless.
The monk's voice was soft. "Then we all must also agree that we cannot allow that child to be born."
"Carol is innocent!" Grace cried. "You cannot harm her!"
"I have no wish to. In fact, I forbid it. So we must find a way to strike at this unholy child without harming the woman who carries him. We need a way to cause a miscarriage, or to convince her"—he glanced heaven ward—"I never thought I would ever say this—to have an abortion."
Grace felt her blood turn to ice, and then to fire, a holy fire of renewed faith as the slowly growing spark of an earlier idea burst into an epiphany of diamond-clear light. Grace was lifted on wings of rapture as she wondered at the glory of God and His intricate ways.
"Oh, glory!" she cried.
"What's wrong?" Martin said, stepping back from her.
"The Chosen One, the one who will strike the fatal blow against the Antichrist. I know who it is."
Slowly, still feeling as if she were floating, Grace turned and walked into her bedroom.
This was the chance she had been praying for all these years. With this one deed she could undo all the sins she had committed in her youth. With this one death, the stains of all the other deaths on her soul would be cleansed.
Awed by the perfect symmetry of it all, she removed the bottom drawer from her dresser and reached into the open space below. Her questing fingertips found the dusty leather box she had placed there so many years ago. She pulled it out. It was as wide and as high as a cigar box but twice as long.
The tools of her salvation.
Ignoring the dust that coated it, she clutched the box to her breast and gazed into the mirror, remembering.
She had started in the mid-thirties when she had been twenty or so. After a few years, all the young girls in trouble had come to call her Amazin' Grace, for she was a trained nurse who was caring and careful with them and knew how to keep them from getting infections after her work was done. Eventually she came to see the sinfulness of what she was doing, and had put it all behind her.
Now she could only wonder if her becoming Amazin' Grace had been part of God's plan all along.
"I'm the Chosen One," she said, beaming at Brother Robert, Martin, and Mr. Veilleur as she returned to the front room.
"Chosen for what?" Martin said.
Grace opened up the box to show the curettes and dilators she had used for so many abortions.
"Chosen to stop the Antichrist."
Twenty-one
Saturday, March 16
"It is too much to bear!" Brother Robert said as he strode back and forth across Martin's living room. Beyond the windows, night had fallen. The hardwood planking was cold against the soles of his bare feet but he ignored the discomfort. "It is out of the question! I cannot allow it!"
"But Brother Robert—" Martin began.
The monk cut him off. "Abortion is a sin! The Lord does not want us to sin! It is blasphemy even to consider such a thing!"
The very idea of abducting this poor young woman, whoever she was, anesthetizing her, invading her most private parts to rip out the dweller in her womb, no matter what its nature… it was completely alien to everything he had dedicated his life to, to everything within him. His body shook with revulsion at the mere thought of being party to such a violent act.
"Then why was I guided to the Chosen?"
Brother Robert stopped his pacing and stared at the third person in the room—Grace Nevins. She sat quietly on a chair in the corner with her hands folded on her lap. He had sensed a buried torment in the woman since their first meeting, and yesterday he had learned what it was. Now that torment seemed to be gone, replaced by an inner peace that shone from her eyes.
"I don't know," Brother Robert told her. "But I cannot conceive that you were brought to us to commit a sin…to involve all of us in the sin of abortion."
"But surely this is an exception," Martin said. "Abortion is the taking of a human life. That is wrong. But this is not a human life. We're talking about the Antichrist, Satan himself. A human life would not be ended by this act. The only thing ended would be Satan's threat to Christ's salvation of mankind! To destroy him is not a sin. It is doing God's work!"
The argument was persuasive, but Brother Robert found it too pat, too facile. He was missing something. There was more to this than he had ever imagined. And so confusing. Was his faith being tested? Tested again?
Faith. He had to admit that his had been sorely tested during the past few years by what he had seen and read and heard during his travels. Not that he had ever been in danger of swerving from his lifelong devotion to God, but he could not help but feel that his faith had been sullied during his travels. It had always been like a pristine, diamond-clear liquid, hermetically sealed against contamination. But the secrets he had heard whispered in the darkest, maddest corners of his travels—and culled from the most deranged ramblings in the forbidden texts he had forced himself to read to their vile conclusions—had somehow tainted that fluid, briefly clouded it with doubt. He had persevered, however, and through fasting and prayer had restored the clarity of his faith. But the doubts had remained as an inert sediment. A sediment that had been stirred up by Mr. Veilleur.
Who was that man? What did he know? The things he had said, what he had implied, they echoed what the hidden others had said: that there was no God, no salvation, no divine Providence, that humanity was but an old franc's worth of booty in an endless war between two amorphous, implacable, incomprehensible powers.
Brother Robert squared his shoulders. Mr. Veilleur was wrong, as were the madmen he had met in Africa and the Orient. Satan was the enemy here, and God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were guiding them all against him. But guiding them toward an abortion? He could not accept that.
The doorbell rang then. He threw a questioning glance at Martin.
"Are you expecting anyone?"
The younger man shook his head. His expression was annoyed.
"No. It's probably that pest, Veilleur. I'll get rid of him."
He hurried down the hall, but when he returned, he was not alone. Two of the Chosen were with him. Brother Robert recognized them as an especially devout pair—Charles Farmer and his sister, Louise.
"They've come to see you," Martin said, a troubled look on his face. "They say they're supposed to be here."
"We're answering the call," Charles said.
"Call?" Brother Robert said. "But the regular prayer meeting isn't until tomorrow afternoon."
The bell rang again. Martin answered it and returned this time with Mary Sumner.
"I'm here," she said brightly.
Brother Robert turned to Martin. "Did you call anyone?"
Martin shook his head. "No one."
Brother Robert was nonplussed. What was happening here?
The bell rang again. And again, until ten new arrivals—six men and four women—were gathered in the living room.
"Why… why are you here?" Brother Robert asked them.
"We thought we should be," said Christopher Odell, a portly man with florid cheeks.