'Take me inside...' she murmured to him.
'Why should I do that?'
'Because I'm dying, and I want to be there ... I want to see Rukenau for myself one last time.'
'He won't want to see you in this state,' Jacob said. 'Wounded and gasping.'
'Please, Jacob,' she said. 'I can't get there on my own.'
'So I see.'
'Help me.'
Jacob thought about this for a moment. Then he said: 'I think not. Really, it's better I go to him on my own.'
'How can you be so cruel?'
'Because you betrayed me, love; going with Will. Making me follow you like some lost dog.'
'I had no choice,' Rosa protested. 'You weren't going to bring me here.'
'True,' Steep said.
'Though Lord knows ... after all we've suffered together ... the griefs...' She looked away from Steep now, the tremors in her body escalating. 'I've thought so often ... if we'd had healthy children, perhaps we'd have grown kinder over the years instead of more cruel.'
'Oh Christ, Rosa,' Steep said, his voice oozing contempt. 'Surely you don't still believe that nonsense? We had healthy children.'
She didn't move her head; but her eyes slid back in Steep's direction. 'No,' she murmured. 'They were-'
'Healthy, bright little babies
-brainless, you said
-perfect, every one of them.'
'I fertilized you to keep you happy; then I killed them so they wouldn't get underfoot. And you truly never realized?' She said nothing. 'Stupid, stupid woman.'
Now she spoke. 'My children...' she murmured, so softly he didn't catch her words.
'What did you say?' he asked her, leaning a little closer to her.
Instead of speaking, she screamed - 'My children!' - the sound she emitted shaking the rock on which she lay. Jacob tried to retreat, but she had the force of grief in her sinews, and she reached for him too quickly for escape. Her scream wasn't her only weapon in this assault. Even as she caught hold of him with her left hand her right tore at the bandages which bound her wound, and the braided brightness went from her as though it wanted to devour him
In the gully below, Frannie had barely clamped her hands over her ears to shut out the scream when she felt a hail of pebbles and wet soil come down upon her head. She had crept closer to the end of the gully in
order to hear the conversation better. Now she regretted her curiosity. The din that issued from Rosa made her sick, despite her attempts to block it out. She reeled round, her body responding more to instinct than instruction, and staggered away down the gully, her feet slipping on the slimy stones. She'd got maybe six or seven yards when some portion of the ground - shaken by the din - capitulated, and the fall of clods and stone became calamitous.
Seeing the brightness escaping Rosa's abdomen, Steep had lifted his hands to protect his face, fearing it intended to blind him. But it was not his face it flew towards; nor was it his heart, nor even his groin. It was his hand the light sought; or rather the wound upon the palm of that hand, which his own blade had opened up.
It was he who had cried out, then, his alarm melding with Rosa's rage in such a powerful combination that the very ground was shaken into collapse.
Overhead, birds ceased their wheeling and swooped towards the safety of their nests. In the surf, seals dived deep so as not to hear the tumult. Amongst the dunes, hares bolted for their lives, and cattle in the meadow shat themselves in terror. And in the houses and bars of Barrapol and Crossapol and Balephuil, and on the open roads between, men and women about their daily labours ceased them on the instant. If they were in company they exchanged troubled looks, and if they were alone went straightaway into company.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was gone.
The avalanche in the gully had its own momentum, however. The falling stones grew larger in size, as the ground gave way, filling the air with so much earth and debris Frannie could see nothing. She had retreated almost as far as Thomas Simeon's resting-place, and there waited while the crevice shook from end to end.
At last, the rockfall subsided, and the dust-thickened air began to clear. She kept her distance for a while, however, fearing either a fresh din from above, or some further collapse. There was neither, however; and after a minute or two she started back up the gully to see how the land now lay. There was far more light than there had been previously, despite the grimy air. The ground that surrounded the end of the gully had entirely fallen away, she saw, delivering a great tonnage of fractured stone, earth and grass into the crevice, where it had formed a chaotic slope. She had her means of ascent here, at least, if she was willing to dare such a perilous route. She studied the rim of the hole, looking for some sign of life, but she saw none. Apart from the occasional drizzle of dirt from the raw edges of the hole, the scene was motionless.
At the bottom of the incline, she paused roughly to plan her route, and then began to climb. It was easier than her descent, but it was by no means simple. The rocks had barely settled, and with every step she feared for their solidity; meanwhile the rain was pouring down, turning the soil to mud. A third of the way up she elected to finish the climb on all fours, which meant that in no time she was virtually muddied from head to foot. No matter; there was less chance of her toppling backwards that way, and when one of her foot- or handholds proved treacherous, she had three others for fail-safes.
As she came within a couple of yards of the top of the slope, however, she felt something touching her leg. She looked down and to her horror saw Rosa lying partially buried in the churned earth, her outstretched hand clutching blindly at Frannie's ankle. The expression she wore resembled nothing Frannie had seen on a human face before, her mouth grotesquely wide, like that of a landed fish, her golden eyes, despite the rain's assault, unblinking.
'Steep?' she gasped.
'No. It's me. It's Frannie.'
'Did Steep fall?'
'I don't know. I didn't see-'
'Lift me up,' Rosa demanded. To judge by the splaying of her limbs, she'd broken a number of bones, but she was plainly indifferent to the fact. 'Lift me up,' she said again. 'We're going into the House, you and me.'
Frannie doubted she had the strength to haul the woman further than the top of the incline. But even if she could do that little service it would surely be the last she provided for Rosa. The woman's death was imminent, to judge by her quickening gasps, and by the violence of the tremors passing through her body. Redistributing her weight on the rocks, Frannie bent to clear the debris off Rosa's body. The bandages had been torn from her wound, Frannie saw, and though it was partially clogged with mud, the same uncanny iridescence she'd first seen in Donnelly's house flickered in its depth.
'Did Steep do this to you?' she asked.
Rosa stared sightlessly at the sky. 'He cheated me of my children,' she said.
'I heard.'
'He cheated me of my life. And I'm going to make him suffer for it.'
'You're too weak.'
'My wound's my strength now,' Rosa said. 'He's afraid of what's broken in me...' she shaped a terrible smile; as though she had become Death itself '... because it's found what's broken in him ...'
Frannie didn't try to make sense of this. She simply bent to the task of cleaning the body, and then, once that labour was done, attempting to raise Rosa into a position that allowed her to be lifted. Once she had her arms beneath the woman, she found to her astonishment a curious strength passed between them. Her body became capable of what it could never have achieved a minute before: she lifted Rosa out of the earth and carried her - not without effort, but with some measure of confidence - up the remainder of the incline to secure ground. The scene looked like a battlefield. Fresh fissures had opened in the earth, running in all directions from the place where Rosa and Jacob had clashed. 'Now to your left-' Rosa said. 'Yes?'