“Only to know what’s going on.”
They walked outside and stopped.
“I knew she might be alive. But I did not want to arouse false hopes. Go climb the Mesa of Last Resort. The man who saw her last may be living there now.” The cardinal started walking away.
“She? Who?” Nimmy called after him.
Brownpony looked back at him without answering.
“Ædrea!”
“Go to the Mesa. I’ll tell the abbot I sent you. He wanted to send you himself. But it was my responsibility. I let you down.”
Pale as a ghost, Nimmy hurried toward the kitchen to beg some hard biscuits and water for the journey. From the cook, who was in a good humor, he received the biscuits, some cheese, and a wineskin filled with a mixture of wine and water. Then he went to the guesthouse to pack a bedroll; it was too late to leave that day, so he slept and left before daylight while his brethren were being called to Lauds. It was a long hike to Last Resort, and the first thing he saw when he arrived at the usual way of ascent was a recent grave with two sticks lashed together for a cross. Its meaning eluded him. After the slow climb, the sun was sinking behind distant mountains. He went straight to the ramshackle shelter he had discovered the previous year and found it rebuilt, but no one was home. He was reluctant to try the door.
After shouting a few times and hearing no answer, he sat on his bedroll to wait. The light was becoming too dim for reading Compline, so he said his rosary, sometimes contemplating the mystery of each decade and sometimes contemplating the beautiful waif who had stolen it from him. The grave at the foot of the Mesa kept coming to mind. He shook his head impatiently and resumed contemplation of the fifth glorious mystery, which was the coronation in Heaven of the Mother by the Son, after her bodily assumption. But there was no before or after, according to Amen Specklebird, for whom the coronation of the Virgin was an event belonging to eternity. The Virgin’s face became Ædrea’s, and he finished the last decade as quickly as possible. When he looked up, a gaunt silhouette with a club raised on high stood over him against the twilight sky.
It croaked: “Don’t get up! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I am Brother Blacktooth St. George, and my master Cardinal Brownpony sent me.”
“Oh, I remember you now,” said the old Jew, squinting in the twilight. “On the road to New Jerusalem, you asked too many questions.”
“Did you make rain for them?”
“Still asking too many questions. Your master sent you with a message? For me?”
“No, he sent me with a question. What can you tell me about Ædrea? You saw her. Where did she go?”
The old Jew was silent for several seconds. “I happened to be of some assistance to her when she fled from her father. She came here with me, after the abbey turned her away. She had her babies. She went away.”
“Babies!”
“Twin boys. They were not alike, though. She left them with me, because they were not perfect. Her father would have killed them. And she had nowhere else to go but home. She knows too much about affairs in New Jerusalem to risk getting caught on the way east to the Valley.”
“Where are the children?”
“The milk of my goat did not agree with them. I took them to Sanly Bowitts. I left them with a woman who promised to take care of them until they were sent for.”
“By whom?”
“Hmm-nnn. How should I know? Someone from the Valley. Or you, the father, probably.”
“Ædrea told you that I am the father?”
“She is a talkative young woman. She was here for, hmm-nnn, seven or eight weeks. She was always singing or talking. I miss her singing, not her talking.” He groped in his bag and handed Nimmy pieces of flint and steel. “That’s the hearth, there in the shadow. Light the tinder. The wood is stacked.”
“Was it ahard birth?”
“Very hard. I had to cut. She lost a lot of blood.”
“Cut? You are a physician?”
“I am all things.”
Nimmy got the fire started at last. Following the old hermit’s instructions, he found in the hut a box of crumbled dry meal, dumped two double handfuls to a pot with a bail, and added water from a great jug by the door.
“Hang it from the tripod. Stir it with a clean stick.”
“What is that stuff?”
“Food, Father.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m no priest!”
“Did I say you were? You’re a father, though. I could call you ‘Dad.’”
Blacktooth felt himself reddening. “Why don’t you call me ‘Nimmy’?”
“Is that what they call you at the abbey?”
“No, but my master does.”
“Is he not at the abbey?”
“Yes?”
“Well, it seems your master let you think she was dead, isn’t it so?”
“He said he couldn’t be sure, didn’t want to arouse false hope. I think I believe him.”
“Hah!” The old Jew began chuckling to himself.
Nimmy stirred the pot until the mush turned thick. The old hermit brought out metal plates, spoons, and cups. Nimmy pulled his biscuits out of the bedroll, poured the cups full of his watered wine. They sat on a bench made of a flat stone supported by fat legs that were sunk in the ground, and ate dinner by the firelight.
Blacktooth crossed himself and whispered the blessing. The old Jew, holding his bowl, sang out a few words of prayer in a strange tongue which Nimmy supposed to be Hebrew.
The mush, Benjamin told him, was made of processed mesquite beans he had brought from Sanly Bowitts. Later in the year, he would pick and process his own. He had raised goats here before, and would try to acquire a herd again. He spoke of past ages as if he had been there personally. Several times he spoke of an “Abbot Jerome” as if he were still ruling the monastery, and referred to the conquests of Hannegan II as if they were still happening. For him, all ages seemed to coexist in his own private Now.
Nimmy spent the night inside the old man’s hut. Again he dreamed the dream of the open grave at the abbey, the one with the baby in it, but he awoke in surprise from the dream, knowing that Jarad Kendemin was buried there. In the morning, he dared to ask Benjamin about the recent grave at the foot of the Mesa. The hermit denied any knowledge of it, then noticed Nimmy’s doubt.
“If you think I buried her there, go try to dig her up.”
“I believe you.”
Nimmy was not in a hurry to leave. His anger toward the cardinal had been aroused, and he wanted to rid himself of it, or turn it into mere diminished trust. Brownpony had withheld the truth from him before, but he could not remember an outright lie. From what the old man said, he knew Ædrea thought he lied. But she had not heard his actual words to Blacktooth.
He stayed an extra day and night. The sky was overcast, and a cold wind had risen. The waterskin and the hermit’s jug were empty.
“Where do you get water up here?”
Benjamin looked at him, pointed casually at the sky, then continued milking the goat.
Twenty seconds passed. A large, cold drop of water hit the monk in the face. Moments later, there was a brief cloudburst. Nimmy asked no more questions.
The old hermit complained that Nimmy was eating more food than he brought with him. So he left shortly after dawn on the third day. When gravel came rattling down the way behind him, he looked back up the path. The old Jew was following him down with a shovel.
Because of the dream, Nimmy had a brief vision of an open grave. And on the third day, she arose again—
But the grave was not open. Instead, they now found two graves at the foot of the Mesa. Obviously one had been dug only yesterday. The old Jew leaned on his shovel, and squinted at Nimmy.
“No, I won’t dig,” the monk said. “Goodbye and thank you.” He hurried away toward Sanly Bowitts without looking back.